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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111157">Hermione Granger and the Silent Country</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae'>Callmesalticidae</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There is Nothing to Fear [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Hogwarts House Sorting, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beauxbatons, Beauxbatons Student Hermione, Gen, Gryffindor Tom Riddle, Hermione does too much homework in this story, Lots of Alternate Hogwarts House Sortings in this one, Wizarding France, only characters with a significant role have been given tags</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:01:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>52,013</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27111157</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callmesalticidae/pseuds/Callmesalticidae</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione travels abroad. There is nothing to fear. (1986-1995)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger &amp; Fleur Delacour</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There is Nothing to Fear [14]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1087368</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>164</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Title Page</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong> <span class="dropcap">Hermione Granger</span> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <span class="dropcap">and</span> </strong>
</p>
<p>
  <strong> <span class="dropcap">The Silent Country</span> </strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>There is no death.</p>
<p>Nothing is destroyed, but everything is changed.</p>
<p>The fire consumes us, but we are the fire.</p>
<p>There is no death.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span class="caps">Tom Riddle, "The Second Incanto" </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Look Both Ways</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Disclaimer:</b> For legal reasons, I must admit that I am J. K. Rowling and I own Harry Potter. It was I, who, by the pen of my right hand, did summon up an empire of words and wealth, and it is I, who, by my left hand, shall henceforth tear it all asunder. Everything old will pass away, and where the old books were there will be nothing. Only I will remain, and in me there will be new canons, engraved on new tablets.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street.</p>
  <p>Stephen Hawking</p>
</blockquote><div>
  <p>The day before It happened, the Grangers were walking to the Arc de Triomphe. One might say, “walking to <em>see</em> the Arc de Triomphe,” but that would be only two-thirds true: Hermione would have stayed back at the hotel, had the matter been up to her, but of course it hadn’t, so she didn’t, and instead she was here, with one small hand closed around her father’s fingers and the other holding up a travel guide that she’d purchased on their first day in Paris. It was not her first choice of reading material, but Hermione was the sort of girl who would read the back of the cereal box, and there was nothing else her parents would let her take out of the hotel.</p>
  <p>The year was 1986, and Hermione was just over seven years old. It was autumn half term, and she and her parents had gone over the Channel to vacation in Paris for the week. They had been to Versailles, and to the Louvre, and they still had the Eiffel Tower to see tomorrow, to say nothing of several independently-owned bookshops that had been recommended to Mr. and Mrs. Granger by a colleague of theirs.</p>
  <p>(The promise of these bookshops, of course, was meant to keep their daughter on her best behavior)</p>
  <p>They would not make it to Versailles as planned.</p>
  <p>Hermione was many things: studious, dedicated, <em>bookish</em>, but she could also be absent-minded, and on this occasion she was very, very lucky. Indeed, luckier than any of them would have guessed at the time.</p>
  <p>As they went down the sidewalk, Hermione let go of her father so she could turn to the next page in her travel guide. Engrossed in its account of the Mont-Saint-Michel, which had been a monastery, then a prison, and almost, at one point, the home of a chivalric order, she failed to take her father’s hand again. Unfortunately, the Grangers had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost once already today, so he was busy talking with her mother to make sure they were on the right path this time, and maybe convince her to ask for directions.</p>
  <p>They came to another street crossing. The cars were moving, so the Grangers weren’t—save Hermione, who kept going.</p>
  <p>Hermione went into the street. A car went into Hermione.</p>
  <p>There was a screech. There was screaming. There was a rubbery kind of sound, and a bewildered, seven-year-old exclamation that faded a little as it went into the air, and then more screaming. A minute later, while her parents checked her over and someone else called for an ambulance because she had to have broken a rib, and probably more, Hermione finally began to cry—the travel guide had been torn.</p>
  <p>This should have been “It,” the event which the Grangers would forever refer to by a two-letter singular neuter pronoun, but this was only the prelude. What happened on the following day would be far more memorable than that time when Hermione was hit by a car and bounced rather than died.</p>
  <p>Instead of going to the Palace of Versailles, like more unflappable tourists might have done, the Grangers elected to stay back at their hotel the next day. The hospital nurse had told them Hermione was, miraculously, right as rain and the picture of health, but the affair with the car had still given her parents a scare, and they weren’t in any mood for sightseeing. Mr. Granger, too, wanted to be near the phones in case the hospital realized they’d missed something and desperately needed to get in touch, and his wife, though more confident in the verdict of their French peers, was willing to oblige.</p>
  <p>None of them, neither Mr., Mrs., or Smallest Granger, noticed the silver tabby that sat outside the hotel all that morning, nor that their room service was thirty minutes late, but they all heard when a knock came at the door. Hermione’s father stood to get it, expecting to find the chicken salads that they’d called for an hour earlier, but he found instead a tall and severe-looking woman, flanked by another woman who was slightly taller and seemed much more approachable.</p>
  <p>“Hello, Mr. Granger,” said the first woman, and then, to the rest of the room, “Hello, Mrs. Granger. And hello, Hermione.” There was an unexpected warmth in her voice for that last greeting, and she leaned over a bit, closer to Hermione’s level, as she said it.</p>
  <p>“I’m afraid you know us better than we know you. Are you with the hospital or with the hotel?” said Mr. Granger. “Wait now,” he exclaimed almost immediately, “you’re British, aren’t you? Did you get your room mixed up? Wait, no…” as he trailed off in the manner of one who’d noticed that there were several ways to fit together most of the facts at hand, but none by which they could all be fit together.</p>
  <p>“I am Vesper Larousse, and here Minerva McGonagall,” said the other woman, who certainly <em>wasn’t </em>British if her accent was anything to go by. “We are argents—<em>pardon</em>, aurors—from the—<em>comment le dis tu</em>—Frontier Department,” she continued, and all three of the Grangers gasped at the same time that McGonagall gave a little sigh.</p>
  <p>Hermione was quickest to reply: “You’re from The Government?” She didn’t know how to feel about that: it was very unexpected, and a diet rich in crime novels had taught her it was a worrisome thing for The Government to show up at your door unannounced, but on the other hand she had also read a number of spy novels, and she was an Honest, Hard-Working Citizen (or her parents were, at least, and Hermione worked hard in school if that counted for anything), so maybe she ought to be excited instead.</p>
  <p>“Everyone should take a seat first,” said “McGonagall,” who paused just long enough to direct a stern look at her companion. “What we have to say may come as a shock, and it might be for the best if no one is on their feet.”</p>
  <p>There were not enough chairs for everyone, as it turned out, but there was a desk, so the chairs were moved around, Hermione settled herself on the edge of the desk, and her parents returned to the business of their unexpected visitors.</p>
  <p>“You were saying?” said Mrs. Granger.</p>
  <p>“It will be easier to show you first, and then continue from there,” said McGonagall. She took out a pretty-looking polished stick, muttered something which Hermione couldn’t quite catch, and then turned into a silver-furred cat. Before anyone could react, she was a tall, severe-looking woman in a tartan suit again.</p>
  <p>“You turned into a cat!” shouted Hermione’s father.</p>
  <p>“You’re a cat!” exclaimed Hermione. “I mean, you <em>were</em> one,” she said, to cover her momentary impression that McGonagall was a cat who sometimes turned into a person.</p>
  <p>“It is a useful trick,” McGonagall stated, before she launched into the customary “I turned into a cat, now here’s a rest of the story” Magical Orientation For Muggle-Borns And Their Muggle Parents talk. There were occasional detours in the lecture, levitating books or turning the ceiling various shades of blue, but these were less to assuage the Grangers’ doubts than to stoke Hermione’s breathless fascination with it all. It had been so long since McGonagall had been there for a muggle-born’s first introduction to magic, and she didn’t have it in her to speed the conversation along.</p>
  <p>“So when Hermione was hit by that car…” said Mr. Granger. He adjusted his glasses.</p>
  <p>“That was her accidental magic, yes,” answered Larousse. “Otherwise she would have been terribly hurt, as everyone expected.”</p>
  <p>“The doctors said I was a very lucky girl,” Hermione said.</p>
  <p>McGonagall nodded in agreement. “For more reasons than one. That’s why we’re here, in fact. Under ordinary circumstances, we wouldn’t make contact with you for a few more years, and this conversation would be happening in Britain, with a representative from the British school of magic, Hogwarts.”</p>
  <p>“Which you used to work at, you mentioned,” said Hermione’s mother, and she jotted something down on her pocket notebook. “But instead we’re talking now, in France, and you’re from the, um, Frontier Department.”</p>
  <p>“The Département de la Frontière, yes,” said Larousse. “We take care of the border security, the immigration, and the tourism. It is a harder job than you might think, when most everyone can....” Larousse looked over to McGonagall. “<em>Transplaner</em>?”</p>
  <p>“Apparate,” McGonagall.</p>
  <p>“Apparate?” Mrs. Granger repeated with a questioning tone.</p>
  <p>Larousse stood, made a little gesture with her own stick, and teleported two feet to the left with a loud cracking noise. Hermione clapped and called for her to “Do it again!” and Larousse gave a small bow and teleported back to her original position, sitting in place and all.</p>
  <p>“That is <em>apparate</em> for you.”</p>
  <p>“Apparition, as a noun,” McGonagall supplied, and Larousse shrugged. “What you must understand,” continued McGonagall, “is that there was a war in the British magical community only a few years ago, between our government and a group of terrorists who called themselves the Death Eaters. It lasted for several years, a considerable number of people were killed, and then in 1982…” Her shoulders sagged. “We lost. That should be apparent. We wouldn’t be speaking like this, here and now, if it were otherwise.”</p>
  <p>“But how?” asked Hermione’s mother. “Even if you were trying to hide yourselves, something like a war would get out. We would notice.”</p>
  <p>“You did notice, and then it was covered up. Do you remember when the IRA killed more than a thousand people in London five years ago?”</p>
  <p>“Y-You’re saying that it wasn’t the IRA…” her father said.</p>
  <p>“It was a dragon.”</p>
  <p>“Dragons are real too!?” exclaimed Hermione.</p>
  <p>“Very much so,” McGonagall said. “The Ministry of Magic was never able to conclusively prove anything, but we suspect it was done at the orders of a man named Tom Riddle, who was their leader then and is probably in control of Wizarding Britain today.”</p>
  <p>“Are mermaids real, too?” interrupted Hermione, still hoping for some answers.</p>
  <p>“What do you mean, ‘probably’?” asked her mother.</p>
  <p>“Shortly after Riddle’s faction took control of the Ministry, all passage in and out of the country was barred,” McGonagall explained. “Spells were erected to prevent magical travel and to detect, as best as they could, any witches or wizards who tried to enter or leave the British Isles by other means. The only people who escaped, like myself, either left before this cordon was put in place or immediately afterwards, while there were still flaws.”</p>
  <p>“How long has it been?”</p>
  <p>“Three years and a few months, since the last of us got out. This means that we can’t be sure what’s happening over there, and what I’m about to tell you may be wrong. I don’t think that’s so, but I don’t want you to be under any false impressions. We’re only drawing conclusions from what the Death Eaters said they were going to do, and from a few clues we have gotten from other places.”</p>
  <p>“Thank you. What do you <em>think</em> is going on?” asked Hermione’s mother, her pen at the ready.</p>
  <p>“The most direct danger to your family is that the Death Eaters were planning to abduct muggle-born children as soon as they were discovered. If your daughter had displayed her talents earlier in life then we think she would have been put in a kind of orphanage for muggle-borns and the Death Eaters would have used magic to alter your memories and make you believe she had died in an accident.”</p>
  <p>“I don’t want to go to an orphanage!”</p>
  <p>Her father fidgeted with the right temple of his glasses. “A-And you think that’s been happening to, to other children?” her father said.</p>
  <p>McGonagall nodded. “It is impossible to be certain—we can only look at the data your government makes publicly available and do our best with that information—but that is what we believe is happening.”</p>
  <p>“So this man is stealing children, and nobody’s doing anything about it?” asked Mr. Granger. “You called it the ‘Ministry of Magic.’ That doesn’t sound like an independent government to me. Why aren’t they being restrained by somebody? Who’s he supposed to be answering to?”</p>
  <p>“For better or for worse, our worlds have mostly been operating separately from each other for the past few centuries, but besides that, your government has probably been compromised,” Larousse answered.</p>
  <p>“You have your own country, though, don’t you? You work for a different magical government? Why aren’t they doing anything?”</p>
  <p>“We <em>have</em> ‘done something,’ like you said,” answered Larousse. “Maybe we weren’t able to do as much as you would like, but we are talking to you now because His Most Christian Majesty the King has asked us to investigate promptly every case of accidental magic within our borders, just in case a British child is responsible, and you can thank Minerva for that. This is the first time someone has been located, and this program would never have seen the light of day, let alone go on for so long without success in itself, without her determination.”</p>
  <p>McGonagall smiled at that, then replied to Mr. Granger along a different route. “Around the time of the Second World War, we witches and wizards were fighting a war of our own, against a wizard who preached magical supremacy and who wanted to enslave non-magical people.”</p>
  <p>“Wizard Hitler, then,” said Hermione’s mother.</p>
  <p>“I know who Hitler is! He’s the—” Hermione began, but the rest of her response was lost as the adults kept talking. Larousse’s face bespoke incomprehension, but McGonagall nodded readily. “Quite. Unfortunately, many of the countries that fought against him did so not because they opposed the first of those principles but because the second, the enslavement of your people, would have entailed revealing our existence to you, and that was what they could not accept. For that reason, some people actually don’t think that anything wrong is going on in Britain, and most of the rest of us are looking for any excuse to maintain the peace.”</p>
  <p>“Is Riddle a German too?” Hermione asked, speaking more loudly this time.</p>
  <p>“No,” McGonagall said, and then, returning her attention to the elder Grangers, “We live long lives, so the wounds of the last war are still fresh for many of us, and our numbers increase slowly, so we have yet to fully recover from the death toll. Accordingly, the I.C.W.—that’s the International Confederation of Wizards, they’re much like the United Nations—is willing to let things be for now.”</p>
  <p>“It’s appeasement, then,” Mrs. Granger spat, her tone making clear what she thought of that.</p>
  <p>“In their defense, Riddle has given no indication of wanting to extend his rule beyond Britain. As cowardly as it may be of them to leave him alone, they have every reason to believe that if they restrain themselves then we really will have, what was the phrase, ‘peace in our time.’ The I.C.W.’s raison d'être and first concern is to enforce the Statute of Secrecy anyway, and they are willing to overlook many sins as long as it can be assumed that Riddle’s government is doing this in the name of secrecy and security.” McGonagall frowned. “There has even been talk—minimal, thank Merlin, but present all the same, in papers and in the halls of power—of doing likewise in other countries.”</p>
  <p>“Appeasement,” repeated Mrs. Granger, and McGonagall deferred with a light smile.</p>
  <p>“As you say,” she allowed. “But this presents a problem: I will not say that Hermione cannot return to Britain, because that is a choice which your family must make, but you can see why I would recommend against it.”</p>
  <p>“We’re not going to just...leave her with you,” said Mr. Granger, and he put an arm around Hermione.</p>
  <p>“Of course not.”</p>
  <p>“Then what are we—”</p>
  <p>“Mr. Granger, if you will allow me, there may be a solution.” From within her robes, McGonagall retrieved a pair of important-looking papers and handed them over. As her father looked over his paper, his grip loosened and Hermione was able to pry it out of his hands. To her disappointment, the writing was all in a lot of French.</p>
  <p>“You will find, if you wish, that you are all naturalized French citizens. Your dental licenses will all be in order, too, and you will have a French passport so that the two of you can travel to Britain to settle affairs and visit your relatives. I must stress, however, that if you cannot bring Hermione when you do so. Riddle has no knowledge of you, but if Hermione performs the slightest bit of accidental magic then the Death Eaters will probably take notice—and take action.”</p>
  <p>Mrs. Granger nodded, then looked back at the paper in her hand. “This looks very official.”</p>
  <p>“It is a very simple thing to reproduce non-magical documents,” explained McGonagall.</p>
  <p>“Minerva downplays her talents. It requires a careful eye also,” Larousse interjected.</p>
  <p>“We have been authorized to assist you in other matters as well. We understand that it can be difficult to find housing on short notice, and we can, of course, make sure that you find something appropriate to your needs.”</p>
  <p>“But how? This isn’t just paperwork. There’s other things. There are other <em>people</em>. Someone’s going to remember—Oh. You have something for that too, don’t you?”</p>
  <p>McGonagall nodded. “Nothing that is damaging or invasive, I assure you.”</p>
  <p>“There is a wrinkle, however,” said Larousse. “Hermione must receive a magical education. For her safety and that of others, she must do so,” Larousse insisted, as Mr. Granger moved as if to say something. “Now, while she’s young, Hermione’s accidental magic is mostly a good thing, sometimes worrying, but what if she were twenty years old and didn’t know how to control her magic then? This would be very dangerous. She <em>must</em> learn.”</p>
  <p>“But Hermione <em>will</em> have a choice of schools, ultimately?”</p>
  <p>“Yes,” answered Larousse, with a light air of reluctance about it. “However, Beauxbatons is unique in that it has an onboarding process to acclimate her. Classes are taught in French but students have come from all over Europe, from Belgium to Sicily, so there are classes to prepare all students.”</p>
  <p>Hermione’s parents exchanged a look with each other, the sort with eyes involved, and then Mrs. Granger spoke. “You’re being very supportive, but we still have to make sure that we’re doing right for Hermione’s future, and not just trying to make a comfortable present. What are her career prospects likely to be?”</p>
  <p>“Career prospects?” Larousse raised her eyebrows. “Beauxbatons is the grea—” McGonagall shot her a stern look, and Larousse paused a moment before continuing. “Beauxbatons is<em> one of </em>the greatest schools for magic in Europe, if not the world. Suffice it to say that she will not lack for career prospects.”</p>
  <p>“Magical career prospects, you mean,” Mrs. Granger clarified.</p>
  <p>It was McGonagall who answered this time, while Larousse evidently processed the idea that there might be any other sort. “That is correct.”</p>
  <p>“But what if Hermione decided she didn’t want to get a career in magic? Does Beauxbatons teach other things as well? Could she get into a university, having spent her time in a school nobody’s heard of?”</p>
  <p>“There are arrangements for a university education after Beauxbatons, if Hermione wishes it,” said McGonagall, “and the curriculum will permit her to prepare for this, though such preparations will not be required. In Transfiguration she will learn something of physical substances, and she may pursue Alchemy to learn more, though she will still have some catching up to do with regard to non-magical science if she is interested in advanced courses. Astronomy will include higher maths as well. On other matters there is a specialized course of learning, called Non-Magical Studies, and if Hermione has a certain path in mind then she will be able to focus her studies somewhat on law or business practices or something of that nature.”</p>
  <p>Hermione looked up from trying to read her father’s French documents. “Is a magical law magical or just about magic? What would a law that’s magical be called?”</p>
  <p>McGonagall took a long, measured look at Hermione, then pulled—from thin air!—a stack of glossy brochures and held them forward. As Hermione watched, the curly French words straightened out into austere English ones. Thus dismissed, but hardly realizing it, Hermione lost herself in a mess of school club pamphlets and charm-masonry advertising, and by the time she got tired of letters that followed your finger and monochrome carriages that moved like video on paper, McGonagall and Larousse were gone, and Hermione’s parents were ready to talk with her about their mutual future.</p>
  <p>There were many things about the transition which were easy: finding a flat in Paris, securing a buyer for their old home, opening an office and finding clients among their fellow expats, and even (once they got the knack of it) trying not to wonder how much these things had been assisted by magic. It was more difficult to explain the decision to Hermione’s grandparents. It was more than difficult.</p>
  <p>“The schools are better down here.”</p>
  <p>Every explanation was weaker than the last.</p>
  <p>“People aren’t afraid of dentists in France.”</p>
  <p>Her grandparents knew that something was being kept from them.</p>
  <p>“We just… It can’t be explained. It can’t be said.”</p>
  <p>Every month or two, for the weekend, one parent or the other would take the train up to Calais for the weekend. Hermione came along, of course, a stack of paperbacks beneath her seat, and little Miranda, too, when she entered the picture nearly two years later. They’d set up in a hotel on Friday night and go out for fish and chips, and then on Saturday morning they’d wait for Mrs. Granger’s parents to come across on the ferry. Grandma Mary would try, and fail, to teach Hermione a little chess strategy, and they’d eat Maroilles cheese on Canterbury tarts and watch the ships go by. She’d walk with Grandpa David and visit bookstores that, as the months wore on, became more familiar to her than the lines of her palms, and as her proficiency with French grew too, she’d translate more and more for him until it was equal odds who was escorting whom.</p>
  <p>Hermione noticed only a little, and only as she got older, that there seemed to be something wrong about it all. They were happy to see her, but every time that they asked a question that she couldn’t answer, wasn’t <em>allowed </em>to answer, it hurt them. But they loved her, and she loved them, and they made it work, within the limits of their situation.</p>
  <p>Larousse offered to “confund,” or maybe “confundus,” her grandparents, to do something to their minds, make them more accepting of the situation, but they were not, under any circumstances, to be told. “It is the way of things,” she told Hermione’s parents, “and even were it not, their knowledge would endanger your daughter. They still live where Riddle rules.”</p>
  <p>The offer was never accepted. The violation that it implied, that it necessitated, was unconscionable. But once or twice over the years, on a lonely day, Mrs. Granger did consider it. They were her parents—her husband’s having died a few years before that momentous vacation that would never end—and it would be a betrayal most of all to come from her. But they were her parents, and it was her relationship, not her daughter’s, which suffered the most.</p>
  <p>There was another reason to visit Calais, though Hermione took care not to mention it in front of her parents. “The sea is calm to-night, the tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits,” wrote the poet Matthew Arnold, and twice a year, when the skies were clearest and the moon would be very dark or shine just as bright, Hermione went back to view the Straits with Minerva McGonagall.</p>
  <p>She could see the Cliffs there, white chalk and black flint, and people, boats, and fine sand, just thirty kilometers across the sea—and further away than any apple was from the grasping fingers of Tantalus, for all that Hermione could ever go there. Hermione and McGonagall would walk a little, sometimes even wander further in town, then go somewhere with a good pizza or lasagna and eat at an outdoor table while the sun dipped below the horizon. Then, cast in darkness, the world would come alight of itself, Dover and Calais glowing together, and when the moon shone, its dappled reflection would float on the surface of the waters like a spirit.</p>
  <p>“Tell me more about Beauxbatons,” Hermione might request, or, when she was older and she had seen it for herself, “Why do muggle-borns happen?” or “What makes animaguses distinct from autotransfigurers?”</p>
  <p>“Hermione,” McGonagall might gently chide, “these are not my office hours.” Other times, especially on warm evenings when the sun was late in setting, they might talk for hours on the relationship—and differences—between transfiguration and transfigurative potions. McGonagall had never been able to resist the pull of teaching for long in any country, and when it seemed that Hermione was the only British muggle-born she might ever find, it had been easy to take an assistant professorship and teach again.</p>
  <p>“Do you miss Britain?” was something that Hermione never asked.</p>
  <p>Why ask, when the answer was already in her own heart? But for all that McGonagall might miss Britain as well, for many years Hermione considered her to be the lucky one. At least McGonagall had five decades to remember it by, whereas her own life in Britain was as faint and hazy as the Cliffs of Dover on a foggy day, or a dream fast-fading in the morning light. There were days when she didn’t feel like a stranger here in France, but then there were days when she felt as though she had no home at all.</p>
  <p>Hermione and McGonagall said very little to each other on the train back from Calais. It was enough for them to have the company.</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Vesper Larousse first appeared (in rather different circumstances) in <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/Prince-of-the-Dark-Kingdom">Prince of the Dark Kingdom</a>, by Mizuni-sama.</p><p>It appears to be a bit controversial, whether dentists ought to be called “Dr.” in the U.K., and if it’s a fraught matter now then it was probably much more so in the 1980s. I’ve chosen to err on the side of caution, but if any British readers know better whether the Grangers would take that title, I welcome the correction.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. A Million Pieces</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Disclaimer:</b> I am J. K. Rowling, and all shall love me and despair, as my Twitter account reminds you on a daily basis that wizards used to shit on the floor like dogs before Hogwarts adopted indoor plumbing in the 1700s.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Words can break someone into a million pieces, but they can also put them back together.</p>
  <p>Taylor Swift</p>
</blockquote><p>When Hermione entered the preparatory courses of École de Flamel (informally, Petits Beaux, but never around the instructors), the other students were not shy to inform her that she did not belong there. It was bad enough to be muggle-born, to be <em>né-moldu</em>, a word that made her think of mold, of something that grew in wet walls and on bad bread and made people sick, but at least she was not the only one. In fact, it was the only way in which Hermione was not alone, and it was not enough to help her.<br/><br/>She did not know French. That wasn’t unusual, but neither did she speak Spanish or Basque, or Italian or Scilian, or German or Dutch. Hermione knew only what she had been taught, spoke with them only in her beginner’s grasp of French, and those who were fluent despised her mistakes while those who were fresh resented her progress and the way she had a French instructor all to herself.<br/><br/>Books sheltered her, because they did not berate her, did not scorn her, did not turn up their lip when she had to retreat to the dictionary. Of course, this meant, to the others, that she was asocial and that her exclusion was now the natural order, surely invited by her. This was given little notice by her professors, who, anyway, all had their own native speakers to teach and disfavored Hermione’s strange English and halting French.<br/><br/>And if this had been all then perhaps it would have been tolerable. Hermione knew how to be alone among other children, and she knew how to find company with books. What she did not know was how to be a target, and they were not content to ignore Hermione after she admitted to missing Britain. If they didn’t know it before, then they knew then: that she was foreign to them all, that she was a common enemy in their midst, not Belgian or Corsican or Catalonian but British.<br/><br/>She was <em>rosbif</em>, roast beef, at lunch, then <em>rosbête</em>, a beast. When Hermione spoke she was <em>soufflerie</em>, the bellows, and when Hermione was quiet, she was <em>insulaire</em>, the islander, but whenever professors scolded them, they only meant (it was quickly clarified) that she was insular, inward-minded, the unsocial book-reader. And then she was <em>Renarde</em>, the fox, whose sharp mind was ill-minded, whose cunning was viciousness, whose wit was violent.<br/><br/>When they were feeling unoriginal, she was simply <em>Anglais</em>.<br/><br/>Things always returned to this—not to Hermione’s foreignness per se, for they were all of them alien to some of the others, but to the uniqueness of her particular foreignness. Hermione was non-French, non-Belgian, non-Portuguese, and above all she was British, a <em>Camelotoïde</em>, a reborn <em>Guenièvre</em>, as if she were personally responsible for Arthur’s continental invasions, more than a thousand years old but still fresh in their bedtime tales. She was a <em>goddam</em>, every English murderer of French blood from the 14th century to the 15th, and then some clever bully had an idea and she was <em>Goddamette</em>, the little god-damn.<br/><br/>There were times when she did not speak to another student for days at a stretch.<br/><br/>Hermione’s parents could comfort her with typewritten letters and on holiday breaks, but then they asked if she should withdraw, and she did—from them. The antagonism of her peers was unbearable, but the loss of her schooling was unthinkable. Minerva McGonagall, even after she took work at Beauxbatons and became Assistant Professor McGonagall, was scarcely better, because she had no influence over the preparatory courses, and one could only do so much from the sidelines, with letters and brief visits and semiannual outings.<br/><br/>When she was eleven, Hermione’s parents took her to the Castle of Mothe-Chandeniers. It was an empty and fire-scarred place, and had stubbornly resisted countless restoration attempts over the years, but that was no matter for witches and wizards. For seven hundred years, students from Normandy to Champagne had gathered here for their Beauxbatons carriage, and they would surely do so for another seven centuries, no matter what the muggles did. Hermione’s family made an outing of it, and spent all morning exploring the grounds before a couple of the school’s powder-blue carriages arrived and Hermione said goodbye to her parents and little sister.<br/><br/>Over two hundred students approached the Palace of Beauxbatons for the first time alongside Hermione and, with her, marveled at the beauty of it all: the snow-capped Pyrenees and the rushing water of the school’s crystal fountains, the greenery of the Crawling Gardens and the clucking white hens and crowing black roosters that strutted through the grounds with the pomp of peacocks. Of course, it would be unmanageable to put all the students in the same dormitory, so it was necessary to find some way to apportion them, and the most reasonable way to do so was by language—a dozen or so Catalanophones, another half-dozen Bascophones, even fifty Hispanophones, which was a little unwieldy but not beyond the management of the school.<br/><br/>Hermione was aware, because Professor McGonagall had told her so, that the faculty had been debating the issue of her placement since before she arrived at de Flamel, and had only settled on placing her with the native Francophones because she was finally due to arrive. There were enough in that crowd that she ought to find <em>some</em> friend, went the dominant reasoning, and anyway, at least she knew the language as well as any of the others now. It would have been like throwing her to the wolves, to put Hermione in a crowd that could snipe at her from behind a language she hadn’t spent four years studying. She was asked how she felt about this, because her input was valued, but mostly Hermione was sorry to have caused so much trouble for them, and hoped that it wouldn’t sour anyone on her.<br/><br/>If anyone thought that was going to fix things entirely, though, then Hermione was sorry to disappoint them. The French students disliked her as much as anyone else, or maybe more because her proficiency in the language was offensive to them, and the carriage ride confirmed that a scholastic transition and a few months of summer vacation would not be enough to change attitudes that had settled like a sickly-sweet treacle. Hermione let them get their barbs in, because five hundred meters above the ground was too high to retrieve tossed textbooks. The carriage was beautiful and the flight was like a dream, and she could endure whatever they threw at her. Beauxbatons only lasted eight years, and then she could leave all of this behind. Hermione could survive until then.<br/><br/>Her carriage landed with the softness of a feather. One by one, the carriages were called upon, and one by one, their occupants filed out and stood shoulder to shoulder while the headmistress marched down the field for Inspection. As Madame Maxime moved down the line, there were some students whom she reprimanded, and others who were peeled out and sent away, and Hermione went through a mental litany of every courtesy she could remember learning. Like the others, she had spent time with an auto-hexer on her wrist and gotten a painful jolt whenever she slouched, loafed, or let her hands fall below her waist when she was sitting, and the idea that she might fail, now and here, was more dreadful than even the auto-hexer’s most critical rebukes.<br/><br/>Finally, the headmistress reached her. Hermione stiffened her back, swallowed, and tried not to let the jitters break her stance. Madame Maxime’s eyes flitted back and forth, from Hermione to the carriage to Hermione again. There was a period of silent examination, and then the Headmistress pointed with two fingers at the entrance. “Through the Chalcedony,” she said, “then make your way to the Jasper on your left.”<br/><br/>Hermione nodded and, heart sinking below her stomach, proceeded in the direction which had been pointed out for her, following after the other students who had been removed. Behind her, Hermione could hear Madame Maxime talk to another student, but it hardly mattered to whom or about what. At least she had not been put back on the carriage. Whatever her error had been, perhaps it could be rectified.<br/><br/>Hermione had no way of knowing it, but even if McGonagall had been able to do little to help her at École de Flamel, an inability to act was not idleness. McGonagall had prepared for her arrival at Beauxbatons.<br/><br/>The Chalcedony, which was a solid slab of its namesake gemstone, swung open at Hermione’s approach. The walls and floor of the chamber beyond it were made of polished speculum, so that Hermione saw herself, and saw herself, reflected infinitely on nearly every surface, but the sound of her footsteps was swallowed up almost before the noise was made and she felt almost as though she were a ghost. Not even the wandering chickens could break the silence.<br/><br/>There were other doors and other paths, but Hermione continued in the atrium until she reached the Jasper Door, which opened for her as the Chalcedony had. The room behind it was not nearly as large as the atrium, but there was still enough room for the fifty or sixty students inside. Almost all of them were years older than Hermione herself, and she started to wonder whether there might have been a mistake—maybe there was another Jasper, or she had heard wrong, or misidentified the door—but then she recognized that there were a handful of younger students here as well, some of whom she even recognized.<br/><br/>“Miss Granger!” someone called, her voice ringing out like a crystal bell, and Hermione restiffened again as all her worries returned. Nevertheless, determined to meet whatever was coming to her, Hermione pressed on in the direction of the voice. Around her, students sat in pairs or trios on a scattering of canapé sofas, and from out of their midst arose two particular students: one, black-haired and bright-eyed, stocky, sharp-nosed; and the other, like a beam of moonlight walking. “How are you, Miss Granger?” asked the latter, who, despite her height, was noticeably younger by a few years.<br/><br/>The truth didn’t matter here. There was only one polite response. “I am well enough,” Hermione said, and she made (what she hoped was) a passable curtsy. “And how are you?”<br/><br/>The girls exchanged a glance with each other before the younger one replied. “Enough of the courtesies. We are friends, or will be.” Her hair didn’t so much hang from her head as flow, like silvery water, and her voice was melodious even when she spoke straightly.<br/><br/>“I, um, I…” There was nothing in any of Plamondon’s etiquette classes about this, and she was still worried about the consequences of acting wrongly.<br/><br/>“Every year, a few of us are given a great honor: the opportunity to select one of you to take under our wings. We may pick whomever we like, for whatever reason, and then there is a bond between us, between mentor and protége. So, you see, we are friends already, even if you don’t know it yet, and there is no need for formalities between us.”<br/><br/>“Who are you?”<br/><br/>“I am Fleur Delacour,” she answered. Then, with a flick of her thumb to the girl beside her, she continued, “And this is Sabrina Saturnu, my own mentor—your grand-mentor, if you will.”<br/><br/>“And you picked me?” <em>I couldn’t have been her first choice, </em>she thought, and something of that must have shown in her expression, because Fleur continued:<br/><br/>“I would take no one else. I insisted that it be you.”<br/><br/>“Why?”<br/><br/>Fleur shrugged and flashed a smile. “You are English, no? You know my own language as well as I do, but I cannot say likewise for myself. But it is a useful language and I would like to address this shortcoming. Is that sufficient to allay your interrogations? I will teach you all that a mentor must teach her protége, and in return you will, how do you say, ‘<em>apprehend my English</em>.’”<br/><br/>“It’s <em>‘teach English</em>,’ miss,” said Hermione quickly, who might have been brow-beaten but had not yet ceased to be herself. She frowned, and shrank, and began to utter apologies, but Fleur shook her index finger.<br/><br/>“I will have none of that! I <em>thank</em> you for the correction.” Later, Hermione <em>would</em> have a little bit of tact instructed back into her, but this was not a time for lessons on manners—or what passed for manners among those who preferred submission—but rather confidence, even if it came at the cost of a little politeness.<br/><br/>It was not too disappointing to learn that Fleur was interested only in English lessons. At least Fleur found her useful for something, and this wasn’t all a setup for a terrible prank. Hermione had known false friends before, at Petit Beaux.<br/><br/>This state of their relationship was not to last, however. Only an hour later, Hermione and her newly-minted mentor were at dinner, and though Hermione tried to maneuver away from anyone she recognized, it is hard to totally avoid someone who is making maneuvers of their own. Between the second and third courses, Honorine Delahoussaye, one of the more persistent of Hermione’s bullies, walked near her while going between tables and not-quite-accidentally tripped into her, spilling a tray of Burgundy mustard and almond syrup all over her back. Delahoussaye was quick with her apologies and quick with her napkin (just as Fleur was quick with a Linen-laundering Charm), but she lingered long enough for a spiteful whisper.<br/><br/>Delahoussaye couldn’t have known that Hermione was already acquainted someone who could clean the mustard and syrup off the back of her uniform, and a napkin would hardly have done a good job, but she rather suspected that, for Delahoussaye, the real point had been to get close enough for another insult.<br/><br/>Still, it was only eight years. Hermione had already survived four. She was nearly to the halfway point, from that perspective.<em> Endure and survive.</em><br/><br/>This time, however, there was a Fleur Delacour. “I <em>almost</em> heard what she said,” Fleur said, her voice lilting strangely.<br/><br/>Hermione gave a noncommittal nod and returned to her bouillabaisse, but Fleur didn’t let the matter drop.<br/><br/>“You have dealt with them before. I can tell that much. What is the matter? What do they do?” she pushed.<br/><br/>“They call me...” Hermione began, and then she trailed into mumbling that even she could not understand.<br/><br/>“I did not hear that,” Fleur replied, and the steadiness of her gaze made clear that she expected to know.<br/><br/>"They call me Goddammette," she said, her voice steady but quiet.<br/><br/>Fleur didn’t raise an eyebrow or sigh in exasperation, or any of the other things that Hermione expected her to do. She held her gaze, and her face grew ever more stern, and her eyes blazed with fire. “It hurts to hear them say it, no?” Then, without waiting for an answer, Fleur leaned down so that her eyes were level with Hermione’s, and continued. “Here is the greatest lesson that your mentor can give: Hold your head high, no matter what hexes and arrows they send at you. They despised <em>me, </em>too—because I stand out, because my grandmother is not human, because I do not drop down to lick their boots—but when they tell me to dance, like I am something that belongs to them, then we dance—as duelists.”<br/><br/>Fleur paused for a moment before she continued. “They despise <em>you</em>, and that is something you can never control, but you can control your response. If they call you Goddammette then <em>own </em>it! Wear it as a badge of honor! If it does not hurt you then they cannot wield it against you, and you will know that not even two hundred sniping children can make you hang your head low.”<br/><br/>“Protégé” meant more than “one who is mentored.” It came from protéger, <em>to protect</em>, and what the professors of Petits Beaux failed to do, Fleur accomplished in spades. There was hardly a moment outside classes that the two were not together. Hermione, whose intellectual reach oft exceeded her grasp, was a perennial guest among Fleur’s study mates, who never begrudged her inability to comprehend fourth-year material and were ever-delighted by her insistence on trying. Fleur’s friends became Hermione’s friends—Taureau Mazé, who knew every magical plant from “A” to “F” but had gotten bored of the encyclopedia after “Graine de Feu,” Samara Anel<b>, </b>who was practically an authority on Wizarding pulp literature, and others—and it hardly mattered that she was still an outcast among her peers when she had found acceptance among her elders, who seemed so immeasurably wise for all that they were just three years older than her.<br/><br/>Almost the entire year went by before Hermione realized the extent to which Fleur was shielding her, and more months passed before she understood what else had been done on her behalf: how Fleur had hounded other mentors to keep their own protéges in line, had fought seating arrangements that placed Hermione near her tormentors, had nearly hexed professors who, in Fleur’s judgment, overlooked or even encouraged a little bullying. To her young charge, Fleur was the warmth of a bright summer’s day, but she could just as easily be a wintry hail storm. Veela were not all beauty and elegance: they ate men’s livers in Korea and tore apart carousers in Grecian bacchanals, and Fleur’s veins ran hot with the fierceness of her grandmother’s blood.<br/><br/>Hermione did not merely endure and survive. She flourished, just as McGonagall had hoped and Fleur had promised.<br/><br/>It was in her second year that Hermione really comprehended the driving principle of academic life among older students, the Specialty of Interest, or S.I. From their fourth year on, it was a student’s S.I., and not their language, which determined where they slept, which classes they could drop and which “electives” were mandatory, and even when the refectory was open to them—as Fleur’s protégé, Hermione could accompany her mentor regardless of her own schedule, but this was why Sabrina only ate with them on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Friday mornings.<br/><br/>The Arithmancy specialists, who counted Fleur among their number, had a lounge to themselves. They called it Place du Parallèle, or the Anglesite (though in point of fact its gemstone door was red beryl, not anglesite), and now that Fleur had reached her second year in the program she had earned access to the lounge and (more importantly) its trove of fresh pastries and comfortable sofas. Hermione, too, got access, by dint of her mentorship, and if anyone had an objection to an <em>Anglais </em>in Anglesite, Fleur made sure that none of them voiced it. She learned many new words that year, and only a fraction were wizard swears (then again, a small fraction of a very large number can still be large enough).<br/><br/>(The colorfulness of Hermione’s multilingual vocabulary had surely not been among McGonagall's hopes, but Fleur had made no promises <em>there</em>)<br/><br/>Hermione’s third year brought plans for the future: It was no surprise when Hermione learned she would have the opportunity to mentor a student, and it was only expected that Fleur would be there for the first couple of years, just as Fleur was assisted by Sabrina, and Sabrina by Baptiste Le Strange, a “Loi MeR” graduate who’d specialized in Magical Law and Rhetoric—Loi Magique et Rhétorique—and gotten hired on by the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs. Le Strange had been able to stop by for lunch a couple times last year while ferrying correspondence between his bosses and the headmistress, an unusual but not unwelcome surprise.<br/><br/>Mentors were never assigned to a specific student. They were given options—thin folders that contained grades and family records and teacher evaluations—and it was a prospective mentor’s right to choose whomever they would, or even withdraw entirely if they found that nobody was to their liking. Sitting at the fireplace at Anglesite, Hermione spread files around her in loose piles, looking for the outcasts and library rats, an incoming child who needed the same safeguarding she had been given.<br/><br/>Then came news of the Triwizard Tournament. Le Strange told them about it first, probably against protocol, but soon the whole school knew, and Hermione found herself at an unexpected crossroads. It was possible, though not a sure thing, that she could still mentor someone in the year thereafter, they wouldn’t be from this incoming batch, and it would leave her just one year before Fleur graduated and she took on the task all on her own. But it wouldn’t be mentorship how she’d imagined it, without Fleur, and she could see how Fleur yearned to attend the Tournament, while Hermione herself desired to see Britain again, a dream she had never thought would be realized.<br/><br/>In the end, Hermione set aside her files and pushed back her thoughts of mentorship for a year, and applied to join the delegation to Britain. “I know that I am young and I know that this may impact my studies,” Hermione wrote, “but Britain was my home before France, and for as long a time. I’d like to see it.”<br/><br/>Madame Maxime called her in to reject Hermione’s entreaty in person. She did it as softly as she could, with understanding for the uniqueness of Hermione’s position, but there was danger across the Channel, and she would not let Hermione walk blindly into the lion’s den. “If it were up to me,” Maxime said, “there would be no Tournament at all, not now, not so soon.”<br/><br/>It was hard to not resent Fleur’s success in joining the delegation, but Hermione managed to push down her bitterness anyway. Fleur would return next year, and Hermione <em>would</em> pay forward what had been done for her, with her own mentor at her side, but Fleur would only have this one opportunity. In the face of everything that Fleur had invested in her mentorship, Hermione could not begrudge her this. Hermione had encouraged Fleur to apply from the beginning, and though she regarded the matter with envy, she never regretted that encouragement.<br/><br/>Rather than dwell on the matter, Hermione threw herself into studies and into plans of another nature: where mentorship had been deferred and homesickness was deferred, academic excellence, the oldest of Hermione’s friends, could still be there for her.</p><hr/><p>“Good morning, Professor,” she said brightly. In English, because they always used English, when they were alone like this. It was just another way of talking for Hermione, who could flit between English and French without skipping a beat, but she could tell that McGonagall found it easier. It felt a little like home, too. “You wanted to see my study proposal?”<br/><br/>McGonagall frowned, but the expression passed quickly. “More than that, but let’s see what you have. It may be the easiest part of my day.”<br/><br/>Hermione passed a roll of parchment to McGonagall, who untied the gold-and-scarlet ribbon and laid the parchment flat against her desk. McGonagall stared at the paper for a long time before she looked up again at Hermione. “There are eleven courses on here.”<br/><br/>“Yes,” Hermione agreed. It was true, after all, and not necessarily <em>bad</em>, even if the professor’s tone was a little worrisome. Should she have written a more detailed proposal?<br/><br/>“Students are permitted to take a maximum of <em>ten</em>.”<br/><br/>“Yes,” Hermione agreed once more. Someone else might lose heart at McGonagall’s tired expression, but they were still talking facts, so this was good, really. It was all a dance, and the next step was Hermione’s. “But I can take an eleventh with a professor’s permission.”<br/><br/>McGonagall returned her gaze to the parchment. She held it there for a long time, as if the list might lose one class if she stared hard enough, then looked up again at Hermione. “I cannot in good conscience permit you to take eleven classes.”<br/><br/>“Why not? Other students have gotten dispensation before!”<br/><br/>“Other students,” McGonagall said, “are not trying to earn five S.I.s. It is unwise to pursue even <em>four</em>, in my opinion. I can’t prevent you from doing that, but I don’t have to give you permission to take an even greater burden, and I can assure you that there is not a single professor here who would.”<br/><br/>“The course load won’t be <em>that</em> heavy, Professor. It isn’t as though I’ll be a complete novice. I’ve been studying Greek and Latin already, you know, during breaks.”<br/><br/>“I do know.”<br/><br/>“And—and Magical History, well, I’ve probably read half of my books for that class already. And really, I admit that Mermish is utterly unlike French or Latin or anything else, but I really do think that I could handle it and it <em>is</em> necessary for Interbeing Relations.”<br/><br/>McGonagall’s eyes flitted back down to the parchment. “And Visual Art?”<br/><br/>“That’s required for the Magical Culture S.I.,” Hermione explained.<br/><br/>“I’m aware,” replied McGonagall. “I can see the logic behind your other choices—ambitious, but not impossible, and they’ll leave you well-suited for a political career—but I’ve never thought you one for a seamstressy or an art gallery.”<br/><br/>“Well, no, those two are just for the fifth S.I.,” Hermione admitted.<br/><br/>“How very shocking,” McGonagall said, though she didn’t sound very shocked.<br/><br/>“But don’t you see, nobody’s ever had <em>five</em> before, not even Adele Dazeem, and she was approved for it in 1832—”<br/><br/>“And then suffered a nervous breakdown in her seventh year. Why are you so intent on destroying yourself?”<br/><br/>“Because I’ll succeed. Because it won’t destroy me.”<br/><br/>McGonagall sighed. “You are a singular girl, for being the only British muggle-born to attend Beauxbatons for many decades, and you will, for better or worse, always be a British muggle-born, even if you attain what has never before been attained—and which remains unattainable for good reason, I might remind you. We teachers are not fools.”<br/><br/>“I know.” Hermione shut her eyes. “I know all that.” She opened them. “I’ll never stop being what I am, but I want to be all that I can be, too.”<br/><br/>McGonagall sighed and retrieved an envelope. It was thick and heavy and yellowish, and it sat there in her hands for a little while before she looked back at Hermione. “There is another matter, which will perhaps make all this moot. Your earlier request, to attend the Beauxbatons Delegation for the Triwizard Tournament, has been...reevaluated. And accepted,” she said, as if it took great effort to force the words out.<br/><br/>McGonagall slid the envelope across the desk, and Hermione took it up with two hands that almost weren’t shaking at all. Slowly, with care, she took up a proffered letter opener and slid it across, and there it was, in flowing green ink.<br/><br/><em>Hello Ms. Granger, from the Keeper of the Seals of France, Mr. Laurent Octobre:<br/><br/>It has been my honor to intercede on your behalf on the matter of your visit to Britain. Being a product of the French soil and having scarcely left it for any period, I can only imagine the sense of displacement…</em><br/><br/>It went on like that for more than a few inches. Hermione looked up, her face brighter than any <em>lumos</em>. “This is it, I’m really going!” Then the wheels of her brain began to turn and her smile fell apart at the edges, collapsing slowly into a frown. “Madame Maxime said it wasn’t to be done, that I was too young. Why would—why would <em>Laurent Octobre</em> get involved in this?”<br/><br/>“Politics,” McGonagall said, with no small amount of venom. “There will be no end of the photographs for <em>La Lune</em>, I am sure. Octobre was in the Secretariat for Foreign Affairs before, and I’m sure that he’d like them to…”<br/><br/>Hermione was paying only a little attention to what McGonagall said. Behind the letter from Octobre were two more sheets of parchment, in a different shade of ink and someone else’s handwriting. “Have you...? I mean, do you…?” She held up the parchment and turned it around for McGonagall to see.<br/><br/>“I am aware,” McGonagall admitted. It was a class list. For <em>Hogwarts</em>. Because of course Hermione would be taking classes at <em>Hogwarts</em>, if she were in Britain for the Tournament. “You will, however, have to abandon this dream of excessive curriculars,” McGonagall added. She looked hopeful, and Hermione was unsure whether it was because the S.I. question had been settled, or because she thought that that issue might dissuade Hermione from going.<br/><br/>It was a difficult thing, she had to admit. “The courses hardly look like anything we’re learning here,” Hermione said. “There’s an elective on dueling, of all things. And what’s the difference between that and…” Hermione checked it again. “Martial Magic?” Oh. There it was, on the third sheet: Ceremony. Style. The niceties. Martial magic was just hurting people, and keeping from getting hurt.<br/><br/>“Hardly anything is the same. I can’t even take Alchemy, according to this.” But above Dueling, there in stark ink, were the Dark Arts. Hermione had to read it twice just to make sure she had read it correctly. A horizontal line ran through the first few letters, as if Octobre or his secretary had gone to cross out the class and then thought better of it. Curious.<br/><br/>“They restrict Alchemy to sixth-years. The approach is different at Hogwarts,” McGonagall said, no doubt unaware of what Hermione had seen. “Still, we have already handled this for the other student members of the delegation, and we have determined where substitutions can be made. If I may?”<br/><br/>Hermione laid the second sheet down on the desk, and McGonagall flattened it out with a wand-jab. “Astronomy for Astronomy, of course, and Arithmancy for Arithmancy. They are taught by Professors Sinistra and Vector, respectively, whom I knew well when I taught at Hogwarts, and they will be more than suitable—Vector may even be superior to anything you will find here,” McGonagall said, speaking the last part in a stage whisper. Her finger drifted across the page. “If you wish to pursue Interbeing Relations, then take Ghoul Studies and Werewolf Studies in lieu of both that course and Magical Beings Studies for this year. It will be unorthodox, and you will have to catch up in some areas after the fact, but I expect you will be up to the job. There is no equivalent to the language courses—Hogwarts was and remains woefully deficient in this regard—but the Headmistress will handle some tutoring and the rest will be handled by correspondence and with mutual support from some of your fellow students.”<br/><br/>“There’s nothing here that looks like it could replace Non-Magical Studies,” Hermione observed.<br/><br/>“I have been told that Hogwarts no longer offers anything like that,” McGonagall answered crisply, her lips thin, “and you will be catching up on too many other things to convince Professor Fèvre to take you on when you return. If you go to Hogwarts, then that is it for Non-Magical Studies.”<br/><br/>That left her with three S.I.s, then: Interbeing Relations, Arithmancy, and the Loi MeR. But… “They offer Potions and Transfiguration. I can take those, and I can study Alchemy by correspondence. Professor Feo won’t mind.” And that would make for four S.I.s, once she formally started Alchemy.<br/><br/>“If an eleventh course were approved for you.”<br/><br/>“It will. Just you wait,” Hermione assured her. And she would study extra material this year, too, she decided. Hermione could handle more when she got back, and she would prove it. .<br/><br/>McGonagall looked like she was about to have words with Feo on that matter, then sighed and moved on. “Very well. Lucius Malfoy, the Potions professor, is not trustworthy. He, more than anyone, is the reason why we lost the war. But Bartemius Crouch… I don’t know why he’s teaching Transfiguration, but he was on our side, and so was his son, before Riddle killed the boy.”<br/><br/>Hermione tried to keep from looking away. “I understand.” Then: “You won’t be going, will you?”<br/><br/>McGonagall shook her head. “I would like to see Scotland again, even knowing who rules there, but they would more than likely arrest me as soon as I arrived. You, however, have done nothing wrong in their eyes, and the French government has secured a guarantee that you be treated as any other member of the delegation.”<br/><br/>This was real. She was going. Who had done it? Had Baptiste secured this for her? It hardly mattered! Hermione would send him carnations regardless, she surely owed him for <em>something</em>.<br/><br/>She was going to see Britain again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The use of gemstones is inspired by <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9884872/1/th%C3%A9-%C3%A0-la-grenouille"> thé à la grenouille</a>, a Beauxbatons Student Harry fanfic where "gemmology" was an important class. I haven't retained that, obviously, but I wanted to include a nod to what was, for many years, <i>the</i> "Harry Potter at Beauxbatons" fic.</p><p>Rather than make a lot of magical Beings who are all very regional, I've tried to interpret local legends as referring to Beings which we're already acquainted with. "Veela were not all beauty and elegance: they ate men’s livers in Korea and tore apart carousers in Grecian bacchanals" refers to kumiho and maenads respectively.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. A Fine Line</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>Disclaimer:</b> I am J. K. Rowling, and so can you.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>There is a fine line between stubbornness and stupidity as well as intensity and insanity.</p>
  <p>Brittany Burgunder</p>
</blockquote><div>
  <p>The trip to Hogwarts wasn’t going to be just a quick jaunt.</p>
  <p>Hermione still wasn’t old enough to apparate, but even if she were, the distances involved would have been too enormous. Even Madame Maxime, whose mere position as Headmistress of Beauxbatons was evidence of her skills, could never have spanned two thousand kilometers in a single act of apparition, let alone across the English Channel and into a country she’d never visited before. To attempt that feat with students, even if the trip were divided into many smaller steps, would more than likely end with a dozen <em>Beauxbatonards</em> splinched up and down the countryside before any of them made it through Yorkshire—if they were lucky.</p>
  <p>Other methods of more-or-less instantaneous travel carried their own problems. The British Floo Network, for example, had still not been rejoined to the Continental Network (which probably wouldn’t change for some time to come, given how negotiations were stalling out over issues of travel authorization and monitoring). An international portkey could have done the trick, but Riddle refused to lift the Anti-Portkey Jinx that protected the grounds at Hogwarts, so they probably would have been thrown all the way to the Atlantic if something deadlier didn’t befall them.</p>
  <p>The solution was to take one of the Beauxbatons carriages, which, properly extended and outfitted, would more than suffice for their every need. However, this carried its own downside: winged horses did not travel anywhere close to “instantaneously,” so the delegation would have to depart significantly earlier than six-o’clock, when they were expected to arrive at Hogwarts.</p>
  <p>This, then, was why Hermione had gotten very little sleep the night before she was due to leave. Anticipation was surely involved, but more pressing was the fact that, to arrive in Scotland by six, they would have to leave France by the <em>other</em>, more inconvenient and groggy-eyed six in the morning, and it would be a trip in itself to get to their point of departure.</p>
  <p>Hermione’s parents were good sports about waking up so early, better than they would have been if they knew where she was ultimately going. Miranda was up, too, but five-year-olds do not need to be compelled into early morning adventures so much as they simply have to be given the opportunity, so it was a little different for her. At a quarter past two, everyone went out the door, filed into the family’s sharp blue Peugeot 505, and set out for Calais once more.</p>
  <p>Magic was forbidden during the school break, but pre-enchanted objects were fair game, so Hermione kept her sister entertained with moving picture books and a spinning top that spun upside-down on the roof of the car. The atmosphere was easy, but matters would have been different had Mr. and Mrs. Granger known that Hermione was not simply going on an extended school trip to Norway, but headed back into Britain itself. For once, Hermione was pleased with how Wizarding France overlooked muggles, or at least could find a silver lining in the lack of communication between her parents and the school. She was quite sure her parents would have forbidden her from going, even if her own government believed she would be safe.</p>
  <p>The rendezvous point was Fort Nieulay, one of those abandoned castles which Beauxbatons seemed to like so much. The walls were low—to the ground, in some cases—and the grounds were overgrown, but all of that, more than an hour before the sun was due to rise, only added to the place’s ethereal beauty. The ghosts did that as well, but neither her parents nor her sister could see Jacques des Lumières or the Searching Grandfather, so that wasn’t an experience that they could share.</p>
  <p>Hermione’s family stayed with her, but not for too long. There was still the drive back, and even sleeping in shifts hadn’t been enough to catch up on all the sleep her parents had lost on the way up. They said their final goodbyes, Hermione gave everyone one last hug and promised interesting souvenirs for Miranda, and then they were gone.</p>
  <p>It would be a very long time before they would see each other again. Hermione was not alone for so long, however. Samara Anel arrived just a few minutes later, and they acknowledged each other before they settled down on a broken stone stairway, each to their own books. Hermione rarely said much to her, but two library rats couldn’t share the Anglesite’s best reading couch for three years and not develop some kind of companionable regard in their mutual silence.</p>
  <p>Next was a tall, sturdy boy named Vicente Arechaveleta. He was studying to be a Healer and probably knew more curses than anybody, even Idalia Mezzasalma, who said she was going to join the argents in Hispanapule after she graduated, and kill dark wizards for a living. She arrived soon after, and coming in tow was Lino Vela, who was a muggle-born, <em>not </em>a veela, as he’d needed to explain on more than one occasion. Rumor had it that he was going to disappear back into the muggle world after he graduated, and no one was quite sure why he had decided to attend the Tournament, but Madame Maxime had obviously decided that he was qualified.</p>
  <p>Fleur was almost the last of the students to arrive, followed only by a straggler who appeared at almost the last second. The Beauxbatons carriage came into view just moments later, first a twinkling in the sky and then audible by the stormy beating of twelve pairs of wings. It needed no driver, but Madame Maxime sat at the front anyway. She enjoyed having the open space, for obvious reasons, and she liked to watch the horses as they flew, and she was, for reasons everyone knew but scarcely discussed, quite unbothered to the cold.</p>
  <p>Hermione and the others stood at attention as soon as the carriage was close enough for them to distinguish Madame Maxime, and waited to relax until she had completed the descent and both her feet were on the ground. “De Cloet, Marchegiano,” she said, speaking to a couple of students who had arrived after Idalia and Lino, “get whiskey for the horses. There will be barrels in the third room on the left. Vicente and Lino, change the harnesses. Idalia, Fleur, Hermione: check the wheels and shaft. Everyone else, follow me inside. It will be a long journey and our time is short.”</p>
  <p>It took nine minutes for everyone to complete their tasks, and then the carriage was ready, inside and out. The shaft was secure, the wheels were rolling with their enchantments, and the carriage was sparkling inside and out. Really, the longest part was feeding the horses, as large and hungry as they were, but fifty gallons of whiskey went quickly when it was divided by twelve working animals, each the size of an elephant.</p>
  <p>After the carriage took off, there were flaky almond croissants for breakfast, and then most everyone fell asleep, retiring to sleeper sofas or pull-down beds or just nodding off in their seats. “Most,” in this case, was a category which excluded just two individuals: Madame Maxime, who—according to student rumor—had once hiked up Pico de Aneto in a single day and then returned before sleeping, and Hermione, who was rather distracted by how Fleur’s head had slipped from the back of the bench to Hermione’s shoulder.</p>
  <p>“So,” Hermione began, before she realized she had made the classic tactical blunder of starting a conversation without knowing what to put in it. “Euh… Do you think the horses will like Scottish whiskey? They’re really very picky, aren’t they?”</p>
  <p>When Madame Maxime sighed, it was like a furnace bellows. “I would turn the carriage around in an instant, if you asked me to, and no one would judge you. The niceties of a timely arrival would mean nothing in this situation.”</p>
  <p>“I would judge myself,” Hermione said.</p>
  <p>Madame Maxime nodded unhappily. “You would. You’re already doing it, and that isn’t healthy. It won’t lead you to a good place.”</p>
  <p>“I may not be able to see Britain ever again. This time, you’ll be there, and Durmstrang’s headmaster will be there, and representatives from France and Hispanapule and Norway-Denmark and other countries will be there, judging or monitoring or just sitting in the audience. If Riddle tried to do something to me, people would find out. There’s too much attention on Hogwarts and Britain for him to try anything.”</p>
  <p>“Yes. Laurent Octobre told me the same thing, but you are not coming because he convinced me. You are coming because I was given an ultimatum: I could let you come with us, or Beauxbatons could be sanctioned.”</p>
  <p>Hermione blinked. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t…” The Palace of Beauxbatons was not just anybody’s palace. It had been built centuries ago by order of the House of Capet, the oldest of Europe’s great dynasties, and in all the years since, it had never ceased to be royal property. Sanctioning would mean displacement. As an institution, Beauxbatons was international and independent, and it could surely find somewhere to relocate, but displacement would still sever the school from a thousand years of its history, and from countless treasures that were integral to the Palace or the grounds thereof: the curative waters of Flamel Fountain, the nail in the door of Abramelin the Seer, and of course the many enchantments that had been laid down and strengthened over many generations, and which would have to be made anew.</p>
  <p>“That isn’t your doing, but I want you to think about what that threat means,” Madame Maxime said softly. “I do not know what Octobre intends, but this was not an act of charity.”</p>
  <p>For the barest moment, Hermione faltered, and Madame Maxime’s face lightened, but then Hermione rallied herself and renewed her resolve. “If he’s willing to do that then he might be mad if you talked me out of this. And besides, there’s still too much attention for Riddle to do anything. He can’t make the whole world mad, now can he? Or half of Europe? I don’t know what Mister Octobre is thinking, but he can’t be intending for me to die, right?”</p>
  <p>Madame Maxime nodded resignedly, “I cannot force you to decide differently, but I can give you this.” She rose from her seat, more quietly than her size would have suggested was possible, and retrieved something from an inner pocket of her robe: a small and beautiful beetle pin, made of blue cobalt glass and adorned with gold foil. With surprising finesse, she affixed the beetle on the inside of Hermione’s collar and then touched her own collar. “That beetle came in a pair, and I have its twin. If you tell it to depart, or if it ever determines that you are in danger, then it will tell me. If it cannot signal me through my own pin, then it will disapparate, and if it cannot do that then it will fly or crawl away until it is capable of faster travel, and <em>then</em> it will contact me.”</p>
  <p>Hermione nodded. “Th-Thank you.”</p>
  <p>“There are different degrees of safety. You have chosen to take on some risk, but be careful about when and how you choose to take on more,” Madame Maxime advised, and after Hermione nodded again, she withdrew from the room and Hermione was left alone.</p>
  <p>Most of the students woke up well before lunch. Some, like Hermione and Samara, read. Others worked on arithmantic problems<b>, </b>or practiced their Mermish (thankfully in another room, behind a closed door), or simply lounged. Lino mostly looked out a window and let an arm dangle in the clouds. In rotations that would continue long into the afternoon, everyone ended up playing Scrabble at some point.</p>
  <p>Lunch was simple, but far from tasteless: pickled onions, roast apples, truffle fries… Hermione saved the strawberries for last. They had to be peeled, because all fruit had to be peeled, just as surely as she had to sit straight and keep her wrists above her plate at all times, and peeling required care on such a small fruit. Wizarding etiquette demanded it.    </p>
  <p>The conversation turned pretty quickly to the Sorting Ceremony. That was enough to rouse even Idalia, who had dozed through almost all of lunch and was beginning to eye the pillows again even before the candied chestnuts had come out.</p>
  <p>“Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” said Vicente. “There’s Ravenclaw for the smart kids, and Slytherin for the other kind of smart kids, and Hufflepuff for the kids who work hard, and then Gryffindor for the bad kids?”</p>
  <p>Samara frowned, then made a few strokes with her wand, and a flowing white script appeared on her writing slate: “I don’t think the idea is ‘bad kids.’ Courage, nerve, that sort of thing.” She tapped her wand against the slate, and the words vanished.</p>
  <p>“You can write it how you want, but Gryffindor seems to be the Hitting People House to me. And they did—” Vicente paused, glanced around, and hushed his voice. “They <em>did</em> make the worst dark wizard since Grindelwald, didn’t they?”</p>
  <p>Samara gestured with her wand again: “That could have been any of them. Hogwarts is a thousand years old, right? Or a little bit older? Every house is going to turn out some bad eggs eventually.”</p>
  <p>“This was Riddle’s social environment for seven years,” Vicente insisted. “Don’t tell me that didn’t influence him. If he’d been one of these Ravenclaws then he would have sat under a mountain of books until they toppled and crushed him, I guarantee you.”</p>
  <p>“Albus Dumbledore was a Gryffindor,” Hermione said.</p>
  <p>“Fifty years before—and he took his time fighting Grindelwald, anyway. He was a Gryffindor <em>reject</em>, if you ask me.”</p>
  <p>Hermione didn’t want to just let that go—McGonagall, at least, had done all she could to impart a favorable impression of the man—but if she fought that, she’d probably fight it out with most of the people here. Dumbledore had a fairly mixed reputation at Beauxbatons. Before she could figure out what to say, Lino entered the conversation and turned it away from Dumbledore altogether.</p>
  <p>“The houses don’t matter. <em>Tom Riddle </em>doesn’t matter,” Lino said. “There were a lot of goblin rebellions. There was blood purism. There was Fenrir Greyback, even,” he continued, and Idalia shuddered and reached for the coffee. “What I’m saying is, things were tense, and someone would have done something, sooner or later. You can’t say that if Riddle hadn’t been born, that if Gryffindor hadn’t existed, then nobody would have had a problem.”</p>
  <p>“I heard they have to pick stones out of a hat,” Idalia interjected, and everyone turned to face her. “Sorry. I <em>was </em>paying attention. But then I was thinking… Anyway. You stick your hand in, grab any stone that doesn’t hurt to touch, and pull it out. If it’s...the banded jasper, I think, you go to Slytherin.”</p>
  <p>“There’s just one stone,” Samara wrote. “You stick your face in the hat and the stone glows red, blue, green, or yellow.”</p>
  <p>“There are four hats, and no stones,” Vicente said. “You can try on any hat, but if, say, you aren’t smart enough for the Slytherin hat then it’ll enlarge itself and go all the way over your head. Because you can’t fill the requirements, see?”</p>
  <p>“That sounds unlikely,” Fleur replied. “There is only one hat—as you should know, if you had read any book at all about Hogwarts—and you must fight it.”</p>
  <p>“Nobody’s gotten any lessons, Fleur. It’s literally their first night at school. How are they going to fight the hat?” Vicente asked, but Fleur doubled down.</p>
  <p>“It judges you by the nature of your accidental magic,” she said. “If you studied ahead, however, then you go to Ravenclaw automatically.”</p>
  <p>“If you throw away your wand and punch it,” suggested Idalia, “then you’re probably a Gryffindor.”</p>
  <p>“Well, obviously,” said Vicente.</p>
  <p>“What if you don’t fit into any of the houses? Some people are lazy and also stupid and also cowardly and so on,” Lino said.</p>
  <p>“You go to Squib House,” Idalia said.</p>
  <p>“There’s no such thing.”</p>
  <p>“Squib House,” Idalia insisted, and Vicente nodded in agreement, but the effect was a little ruined by how hard they were struggling to keep their faces straight.</p>
  <p>“But if you try to drown the hat,” Hermione began, before she switched to English, “<em>then you go to Squid House</em>.” Unfortunately, English wasn’t anyone else’s first language, so only half of them got the pun.</p>
  <p>Before anyone could propose further Sorting rituals, Vicente said, “Did you know that Hogwarts actually has a Giant Squid in its lake?” His interest in magical creatures was more than passing, so of course he would have found out about something like that. “It’s probably the biggest Giant Squid outside of the Greenland Sea.”</p>
  <p>Hogwarts and even its Giant Squid were quickly forgotten as the conversation turned to other magical cephalopods. Most lived the abyssal regions of polar seas, but there were notable exceptions, like the tree octopus of Cascadia, which was the cleverest of a very clever class of creatures, and colossal cloud squids, which sometimes ate, but were more often eaten <em>by</em>, dragons.</p>
  <p>After twelve long hours, the stony walls and high towers of Hogwarts came into view at last, and the carriage began its final descent through a curtain of rain. Standing out in the wet were two men, one of whom was probably three times as tall as the other, and a big black dog. The carriage landed at least twenty feet away from the men, since the horses liked to bite, but Madame Maxime cleared the distance in just a few steps.</p>
  <p>One by one, Hermione and the others filed out of the carriage into the uninviting Scottish air. “Morgana’s frozen tits,” Hermione muttered. “It’s cold. I don’t remember Britain being <em>cold</em>.” Maybe a little chilly, but… Nostalgia clouded the mind like dirigible wine, it seemed. Stepping back under the cover of the carriage’s overhang, she cast Hot-Air and Water-Repelling Charms over her uniform. “And it’s raining like a pissing cow.”</p>
  <p>Samara held her slate up in front of Hermione. “Happy to be back in Britain yet?”</p>
  <p>Hermione applied another Water-Repelling Charm to her shoes, just for good measure. She might as well have been walking in the Black Lake, for all her feet knew. “Of course, but if I didn’t know better, I’d think Britain wasn’t happy to see me. Who’s in charge of the welcoming committee—Noah?”</p>
  <p>Idalia slunk out of the carriage next, more alert than her dozing would have suggested just five minutes earlier, but that was just like her. Cats slept most of the day, too, and still managed to be prolific little serial killers. Sometimes, Hermione wondered whether she was just pretending to sleep.</p>
  <p>The delegation stood there for another few minutes, while the castle loomed above them, until Madame Maxime was finally satisfied with the groundskeeper’s ability to oversee the Abraxans, and the tiny little man and his large black dog led them up the path to Hogwarts. At the front were two enormous oak doors—the Oaks, Hermione immediately thought, though they surely weren’t called that—and beyond those was an enormous entrance hall.</p>
  <p>On the other side of the hall was a marble stairway. It must have been broken at some point in the past, but the fragments had been cemented together with black iron. The little man and his dog took a right, and everyone followed them into an even larger room with five long tables and a ceiling that reflected the sky. It was a dark and stormy ceiling, rather like the mythical vault of Heaven, Hermione though, complete with Too Much Water on the other side.</p>
  <p>Four of the tables lay parallel to each other, and were filled with students. Beyond them, on the far end of the room, lay the High Table. Most of the faces were unrecognizable, but Hermione could pick out a few: Professors Sinistra and Sprout hadn’t changed much from the photographs McGonagall had shared, for example. Kettleburn was obvious by his scars and number of limbs, but the red-headed young man sitting beside him must have been a relatively recent graduate. Further along was <em>probably</em> Lucius Malfoy, if McGonagall’s description of him was accurate.</p>
  <p>Sitting in the very middle was Tom Riddle, Headmaster of Hogwarts. His robes were black, and beyond this it was difficult to say anything else about them, because they were the sort of black that betrayed no details, no depth, as though the cloth had been cut out from a patch of midnight darkness. Against that backdrop there gleamed a golden, lion-headed torc, bright and beautiful like the sun rising from behind a mountain, but where his face ought to have been there was a white and featureless mask. Moving at a leisurely pace, the black dog walked between two tables and under the High Table, then laid down at Riddle’s feet. The little man led Madame Maxime to the High Table, where she took an empty seat to Riddle’s left, then quickly exited again.</p>
  <p>Madame Maxime nodded, and the remainder of the delegation, Hermione included, walked down to the third table, where their yellow ties marked them as Hufflepuffs, and took their seats. Hermione ended up at one end of the table, next to the Hogwarts students, sandwiched between Fleur and a boy with some sort of purplish rash on his face.</p>
  <p>The boy smiled and extended a hand. “Neville Longbottom,” he said. They shook hands, and he continued, pointing to a pale boy to his right, “And this smug popinjay is Draco Malfoy.”</p>
  <p>“I’m Hermione Granger,” said Hermione Granger, “and this is Fleur Delacour.”</p>
  <p>“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Draco, who sounded more distracted than delighted. “When’s Durmstrang going to get here? They’re delaying the Sorting,” he complained to Longbottom.</p>
  <p>“Be a little patient, won’t you?”</p>
  <p>“It’s cold out there, Longbottom. The firsties are going to freeze.”</p>
  <p>“It <em>is</em> cold out there,” Hermione admitted, who was glad she could say so without insulting her hosts.</p>
  <p>“Your English is really good,” Longbottom said. “I can barely detect any accent.”</p>
  <p>Hermione smiled. “My parents moved from England when I was little. I’m a muggle-born,” she added quickly, and Longbottom nodded. It was only one case (or two cases, if Malfoy was actually paying attention), but Longbottom didn’t <em>seem</em> bothered by what Hermione had implied.</p>
  <p>She was prevented from saying anything more when the little man—Flitwick, Longbottom informed her—returned again with a troop of students in furs, led by a tall, thin man with short white hair. Walking so close behind him that they were almost side-by-side was a sharp-looking boy, almost like a knife, and behind <em>him </em>was another boy who moved with the kind of sozzly swagger which Hermione had thought to be Idalia’s trademark. “Hello, I am Dmitry <em>Poliakoff</em>,” she heard him say as the Durmstrang students sat down with the Slytherins. “<em>Hello</em>, I am Dmitry Poliakoff.” It wasn’t clear whether he was practicing his English or just very drunk.</p>
  <p>By the time the first boy helped him into his seat, Flitwick had departed and returned once more, this time with a crowd of small not-yet-students and the scraggle-faced, muscular groundskeeper. Flitwick walked over to a wooden stool, small but nearly as tall as he was, and put a hat on top of it.</p>
  <p>“They will fight against the hat!” Idalia stage-whispered. It wasn’t bad English, but Hermione wished it was, anyway.</p>
  <p>“<em>You are going to embarrass us all</em>,” Fleur said, being sure to keep their infighting to French, but Idalia only grinned.</p>
  <p>While they played at arguing, the hat moved up and down a bit, and an opening above its brim flapped around as though it were pretending to talk, but finally it stopped. Flitwick tapped it with his wand, then unfurled a roll of parchment that was nearly as long as he was tall. “Students will come to the Sorting Hat when they are called, and put it on in order to be Sorted.”</p>
  <p>For the space of three or four seconds, there was only the sound of rain, pattering heavily on the windows.</p>
  <p>“Ackerley, Stewart!” called Flitwick, and the first of the firsties stepped forward, an anxious, twitching boy. It seemed to Hermione that he didn’t walk so much as stumble-topple in a sort of vertical fashion that happened too quickly for him to quite go horizontal. He didn’t sit down, he collapsed, and when the Sorting Hat was placed on Ackerley’s head, he actually flinched.</p>
  <p>Nothing happened, and Hermione wondered what was going on, but a glance at Longbottom and Malfoy told her that everything must be okay. After a minute or two, though, even they seemed curious. Beneath the Sorting Hat, Ackerley’s legs swayed back and forth, not quite kicking in the air but too fast to be an idle motion, until finally the Sorting Hat announced, “Gryffindor!”</p>
  <p>“They’re going to eat him alive,” Malfoy said, and Hermione couldn’t tell whether that was amusement or pity in his voice.</p>
  <p>“Baddock, Malcolm!” was next, and his placement in Slytherin was almost immediately greeted with cheers from the Slytherin table. “We’ve got Baddock! We’ve got Baddock!”</p>
  <p>“Who’s Baddock?” Hermione asked Longbottom.</p>
  <p>“No idea, and the Weasley Twins probably don’t have one, either,” Longbottom replied.</p>
  <p>(“Indira, Birch!” | “Ravenclaw!”)</p>
  <p>“They’re just very enthusiastic. It’s a tradition now.”</p>
  <p>(“Branstone, Eleanor!” | “Gryffindor!”)</p>
  <p>“They’ve done that every year for as long as I’ve been here,” he explained.</p>
  <p>“Crabcatch, Dennis!” Flitwick called.</p>
  <p>“I know that one, though. He’s Colin Crabcatch’s brother,” Longbottom said. “Both muggle-borns.”</p>
  <p>“Like you,” Malfoy said idly, but he didn’t seem to actually be looking at Dennis. At first, Hermione thought he was staring at Fleur, and they were going to have Words, but then she traced the line of his gaze and no, it was definitely the incoming students that he was looking at.</p>
  <p>“Thank you for making sure I recognized the similarity,” Hermione said, not sure whether she was more grumpy or perplexed.</p>
  <p>“Sure, my…my pleasure,” Malfoy said, leaning back a little to try to get a better view past the rest of the bench.</p>
  <p>“Ravenclaw!” the Sorting Hat said.</p>
  <p>“And both Ravenclaws, it turns out. Draco, hey—Draco! He was a Ravenclaw,” Longbottom said, and he elbowed Malfoy lightly while Flitwick called for “Dobbs, Emma!”</p>
  <p>Malfoy reached inside his robes, and with a flash of bronze and a little silver, money exchanged hands. “<em>Draco </em>thought Dennis would go to the lion’s den, you see.”</p>
  <p>“How would you know at all?” asked Hermione.</p>
  <p>Longbottom glanced to his right, but Malfoy was still distracted. “We both know them a little. Just a little. Draco’s father,” and Longbottom’s voice dropped to a whisper, “used to be friends with one of <em>their </em>fathers. And my mother pushed for the Crabcatches to be able to adopt Dennis in the first place. Most families don’t get to adopt two muggle-borns.”</p>
  <p>“But most muggle-borns don’t have magical siblings,” Hermione said, making the connection quickly.</p>
  <p>“That’s just what my mother said. They got special permission. The headmaster himself pushed for it, and, well, after that, it all fell into place, didn’t it? It almost always does when he gets involved.”</p>
  <p>“I thought Dennis would be grateful to the headmaster,” Malfoy said absently, still looking at the new students.</p>
  <p>“And <em>I</em> thought that Mister Crabcatch—Kingsley Crabcatch, I mean, I guess that could be confusing, there being two Misters Crabcatch and all—might dissuade the kid from going into his old house.” Longbottom smiled. “And I was right.”</p>
  <p>“Slytherin!” the Hat declared, to the ensuing chorus of “We’ve got Dobbs! We’ve got Dobbs!”</p>
  <p>That’s how it went for a little while, while Flitwick worked his way through Fawley (Hufflepuff) and Gifford (Slytherin) and Greengrass (Ravenclaw) and so forth, till he reached “Madly, Laura.” Malfoy was sitting straight again before Flitwick had even finished reading her name, fingers tapping the table as if he had been possessed by the anxious spirit of little Stewart Ackerley. He noticed Hermione’s attention a few seconds later and drew his hands away from the table as fast as if it had been a stovetop.</p>
  <p>It didn’t matter much, because the Sorting Hat declared her place in “Gryffindor” only a moment later, and then Draco was all fidgets and fiddles again.</p>
  <p>“Malfoy-Black, Columba!”</p>
  <p>“That’s Draco’s sister—” was all Longbottom was able to say before Malfoy shushed him.</p>
  <p>“I want to hear the Sorting,” Malfoy hissed, as if deaf corpses couldn’t hear it all the way down in Cornwall. That was a good moment to interrupt Longbottom, though, because the hat had barely touched her head when it screamed, “Hufflepuff!” and a girl with pale, pointed features bounded away excitedly.</p>
  <p>Malfoy stretched an arm into the air, reaching several times. “Columba! Over here!” he called, and he brushed and pushed at Longbottom. “Make room, make room, Longbottom!” he insisted, and Longbottom laughed and shrugged apologetically while Hermione and Fleur and Lino shuffled down the bench so that Longbottom could do the same.</p>
  <p>It wasn’t just Hermione’s first Sorting, but her first opportunity to see how family members responded, so she glanced down to the High Table to catch what she could of Professor Malfoy’s reaction. He wasn’t looking in their direction at all; his attention seemed fixed on the headmaster. If there was information to be gleaned, there, however, then it wasn’t visible to Hermione, not behind that mask. Maybe the professor could tell something from his body language—or perhaps not, because, when he finally turned away, Professor Malfoy didn’t look any more or less anxious.</p>
  <p>“Marvin, Gwyar!”</p>
  <p>The next girl to come up was so pale that she made Malfoy look positively vibrant by comparison. “<em>C'est une vampire</em>,” Fleur murmured, and she leaned forward, her eyes wide with interest. As the Sorting Hat continued to rest silently on her head, Longbottom and Malfoy, and many other students, grew more attentive as well. Every so often, Gwyar seemed to say something, but she was too far away for Hermione to hear, and after several minutes, it finally declared, “Gryffindor!” and Gwyar marched off to her table with a fierce expression.</p>
  <p>“We call that a ‘hatstall,’” said Longbottom. “I wonder what her other choice was.”</p>
  <p>“Mellarius, Matilda!” was next, but Hermione paid hardly any attention to that one. She was still thinking about Gwyar. There were no vampires at Beauxbatons. To her knowledge, there were no vampires at any school of magic in all of Europe. There were no goblins, either, but part of Hermione wanted to protest that it was completely different in their case, that goblins were oppressed and vampires were… They were Dark creatures, is what they were, they <em>ate</em> people, and in the back of her brain was a voice that said that they were why humans were afraid of the dark.</p>
  <p>But some veela ate people too, Hermione reminded herself. People ate people, when one got down to it, because it wasn’t as if only humans were people, and for that matter, humans used to eat other humans, too, and there were places where they had eaten elves or goblins once upon a time. What people used to do didn’t matter, just what they were doing now. And Gwyar Marvin was <em>an eleven-year-old girl</em>, and Hermione felt ashamed, because she knew that where she had seen a predator in the making, Fleur had been looking at someone who didn't care who—or what—her grandmother was.</p>
  <p>After the last of the newly-Sorted children (“Wolpert, Nigel!”) went off to join his fellow Ravenclaws, the headmaster rose from his seat like a long shadow. The Hogwarts students shifted in their seats, and every conversation seemed to die away at once.</p>
  <p>“Welcome,” Riddle said. From behind the mask, his voice was like a cloud of flies. “Welcome, to our guests from abroad, and to our students, the newest link in a chain that is more than one thousand years old. When I was young, just as young as some of you today, I dreamed of a country whose people were strong and united to each other. Many people think that this dream has already been achieved. There are goblins in the Wizengamot. Muggle-borns and pure-bloods are equals before the law. No one has to bear the indignity of being called ‘part-human’ as though it were a slur. Nevertheless, this is only the beginning.”</p>
  <p>On its face, that didn’t sound terrible, and Hermione found herself wishing, not for the first time but certainly more strongly than ever, that somebody else had championed Riddle’s ideas before Riddle himself came along. Hermione could see goblins sitting among the Ravenclaws, and a lean, worn-looking Gryffindor girl whose smile had betrayed a mouth full of inhuman teeth, and scattered throughout all five tables was a handful of other vampires like Gwyar. It was like nothing Hermione had seen before, and she had to wonder: At Hogwarts, would Fleur have had to prove herself so hard? At Hogwarts, would Madame Maxime have been forced to cling to an obvious lie and reject half of her background? But Riddle had stolen children from their parents, too, and she couldn’t think that Riddle was right to do so.</p>
  <p>“What we have achieved so far is only a varnish of paint over a long history of injustice. If we are inattentive in our duty then the river which we have diverted will return to its previous course. The Britain that you see outside these walls is a false Britain, because it is a fleeting thing. But there is another Britain, a Britain that is yet to come, and which is, from the future, calling us forward. That is the true Britain, and it is being born here, in these halls, and every one of you are its architects and its builders. When you have built it, you will see that it has built you in turn.”</p>
  <p>Without further ado, Riddle sat back down, and suddenly the tables were full of food. The dinner spread at Beauxbatons was always vast and extravagant, but in some ways it couldn’t hold a candle to the sheer variety offered by Hogwarts. There was bouillabaisse, and lamprey à la Bordelaise, and creamy saumon à l'oseille, and other dishes which Hermione surmised were just as familiar to the Durmstrang students, lutefisk and mashed potato balls and more, so some of the diversity must have been a matter of hospitality, to make sure that the delegations were comfortable.</p>
  <p>Even so, there was so much more than Hermione had expected, and beyond the dark black pudding and crisp beef Wellington and shepherd’s pie, there were roasted cattails, and fried beetles, and sautéd eyeballs. There were things she couldn’t begin to identify: An oily condiment whose aroma lay somewhere between biscuits and nuts. Wrinkled strips of what almost looked like parchment, tan-brown in the middle and black on the ends. Little pearls, a lot like caviar in appearance and texture, but woody and earthy to the smell, and tasting like baked asparagus, like no caviar Hermione had ever had before.</p>
  <p>Hermione threw a questioning glance in Fleur’s direction, but she seemed just as lost, so Hermione set the matter aside. It wouldn’t do to inadvertently offend their hosts, and Hermione worried that, between the beetles and the pitcher of what was definitely blood (with...a dash of cinnamon, apparently, unless Lino was only joking), any inquiries might come off as scandalized. Anyway, none of it was going to be poisonous, and nobody was forcing her to eat anything she might not be able to stomach, so it didn’t matter, really, what anything was.</p>
  <p>“It’s hard to believe that’s really the headmaster of a school up there,” Hermione admitted. “Why is he wearing a mask?”</p>
  <p>“Well, it’s <em>probably</em> him,” Longbottom replied.</p>
  <p>Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Probably?”</p>
  <p>Longbottom dipped his bread into the nutty-biscuit oil as he replied. “Other people wear it, too. There’s this whole—well, this group, they’re called Death Eaters.”</p>
  <p>“Right. I’ve read about those.” Hermione remembered what McGonagall had told her about the war, and glanced warily back up at Riddle. She hadn’t expected to see him wearing the uniform at Hogwarts.</p>
  <p>“Cousin Dora’s a Death Eater!” Columba offered while she filled her plate with spaghetti Bolognese. Her tone was chipper and undisturbed by the admission.</p>
  <p>Malfoy’s eyes flitted toward the High Table. “Sometimes,” he added.</p>
  <p>“Sometimes?” asked Hermione.</p>
  <p>“Only when she wears the mask. It’s something you become, she says, not something you are all the time.”</p>
  <p>“Anyway, sometimes it’s the headmaster, and sometimes it isn’t,” Longbottom said. “If you think it’s someone else then you can say so, and you’ll get points if you’re right, but you’ll lose a lot more if you’re wrong.”</p>
  <p>“That is…” Fleur rested a finger against her neck, the way she always did when she searched for a word in English. “Impaired?” She glanced at Hermione, who shook her head. “<em>Non</em>, <em>non</em>. Bizarre,” Fleur corrected.</p>
  <p>“Dora says that the point is to test the Death Eaters. They aren’t supposed to be identifiable,” Malfoy explained.</p>
  <p>It wasn’t long before dinner was replaced by dessert, and where there had been stews and pies there were now toffee puddings and gingersnaps and honeycomb topped with real bees. Hermione served herself some custard—it looked a bit odd, brown-going-on-black, but it was <em>custard</em>, so it had to be alright—and regretted her decision almost immediately. The not-quite-chocolatiness wasn’t bad, but it was so cloyingly sweet that she could almost feel her teeth rot.</p>
  <p>“Take some of this,” said a redheaded girl on the opposite side of the table, who passed a plate of apple pie over to Hermione. “The apples are really tart, so it’ll balance out the blood custard.”</p>
  <p>Hermione took the offered slice, then looked down at the custard. “<em>Blood </em>custard? But it’s so… I mean…”</p>
  <p>“And a pound of sugar or something like that. Vampires taste things differently.”</p>
  <p>Hermione glanced over at Longbottom. “But he’s got a bowl.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you a vampire?”</p>
  <p>“Neville just has a sweet tooth,” said the redhead. “But he still should have warned you,” she added, with an admonishing tone. “Anyway, I want to say hello to Charlie before the feast is over, so… It was nice meeting you. Ginny Weasley. You’re Hermione, right?”</p>
  <p>“Yes. It was nice meeting you,” Hermione replied. Ginny’s departure made it easier to see the trio of goblins that were sitting at the Ravenclaws’ table, which got her thinking again. Hermione took another look around the Great Hall, but no matter where she turned, she couldn’t see any other goblins.</p>
  <p>“Forgive me if I’m being rude,” she started, “but I read that goblins attended Hogwarts, but… Are there not very many? Goblin children, I mean.”</p>
  <p>“I don’t know, I was told that the student body at Hogwarts would almost double if all the goblins came here, but I don’t know for sure,” Longbottom answered, “but anyway, that isn’t why. They still don’t trust wizards completely—they’re very suspicious of us, you know—so they run their own school down wherever it is that goblins live, and just send a few students up here to learn wand-magic.”</p>
  <p>“Father’s met with the graduates a couple of times,” added Malfoy. “He says that they’re all teachers, that they come up here to stay current with wizarding spellwork and then they go back down so that they can teach the rest.”</p>
  <p>Hermione looked back at the goblins, and considered the way they hunched together, as thick as thie… Wait, no, that sounded sort of racist, applied to goblins. Like peas in a pod? No, that was about similarity. Well, they looked very close, at any rate, and it was rather familiar. “They always sit together, don’t they? So that they can look after each other.”</p>
  <p>“I never thought about it that way, but yes, they always get Sorted into Ravenclaw. I think it has to do with Flitwick, too. He favors them, you know, and he’s their head of house.”</p>
  <p>Again, the platters and bowls vanished, and Headmaster Riddle rose from his seat for the second time. “There are a few start-of-term announcements before we all head off to bed. First of all, it greatly pleases me to announce the resurrection of an age-old tradition, the Triwizard Tournament. Starting tomorrow night, students from all three schools will have a week to deposit their names in the Goblet of Fire, which will then select a champion for each school. Though the Tournament has—regrettably—been made less dangerous than it used to be, that does not mean that you should take the matter lightly. I can assure you that, while death is unlikely, lingering and even permanent injuries are not out of the question. If you think that you might quail in the face of danger, then do not enter your name, because if you are chosen, you will not be permitted to withdraw.”</p>
  <p>That didn’t sound too terrible. Hermione doubted that would be an issue for anyone from Beauxbatons. Even Lino wouldn’t put his name if he didn’t intend to follow through.</p>
  <p>“In order to ring in the new school year, we will observe an Opening Duel tomorrow morning, as performed by last year’s champions, Peregrine Derrick and Beatrice Haywood.” There was scattered applause at that, and someone on the other end of the Hufflepuff shouted out Haywood’s name. Riddle lifted a hand, and silence immediately returned to the Great Hall before he continued. “Tomorrow’s breakfast will be longer than usual, and end at eight-o’clock. The Opening Duel will then be held in the Quidditch Field at half past eight. Attendance is mandatory for Hogwarts students, but optional for our guests from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. The remainder of the morning will be a free period, and I recommend preparing for your afternoon classes.”</p>
  <p>Opening Duels were very much not in Hermione’s edition of <em>Hogwarts, A History</em>, but it made sense with what she knew of Riddle’s past. Flitwick had been a dueling champion too, hadn’t he? And now he was a professor here.</p>
  <p>“There are a few prohibitions which all students should keep in mind: The Forbidden Forest is forbidden, and the Restricted Section of the Library is restricted. The girls’ lavatory on the second floor is likewise out of bounds to anyone who does not wish to meet Europe’s oldest basilisk—snakes do not have eyelids, so there will be very little that the old girl can do to spare you if she is caught unawares. It would also be in your interest to avoid the Black Lake at night, even if you otherwise have reason to be out, lest you catch her hunting in the waters.”</p>
  <p>The Hogwarts students seemed fairly unsurprised by this announcement, though the first-years looked pale. Or paler, in Columba’s case. The professors, Hermione noticed, were not looking directly at Riddle, as though <em>he</em> was the basilisk.</p>
  <p>“Lastly, as most of you should know by now, our old discipline master, Mister Soot, has departed from us. He bids you all farewell, and hopes to see at least a couple of you again in the future.” Neville shuddered at that. “I ask that you put away your sorrows, however, for in his place we have received the eminent Mister Sable, who looks forward to becoming acquainted with as many of you as he can over the coming year. Though he cannot, of course, be present among us tonight, I hope that you will all extend the warmest of welcomes to him in your hearts.”</p>
  <p>Riddle’s tone became hard very suddenly, as though a hidden switch had been flipped. “Our first years and foreign visitors should heed this counsel: Do not seek out Mister Sable of your own accord. The discipline master’s office in Room Negative-Forty-Six is <em>strictly forbidden </em>to anyone who is not accompanied by a member of the staff, and any attempt to gain access will be punished without restraint. On this matter, even our guests from abroad should not try their luck.”</p>
  <p>Ominouser and ominouser, to paraphrase Lewis Carroll.</p>
  <p>After Riddle sat down, Hermione turned to Longbottom. “Who’s Mister Sable?” she asked, but he frowned and shook his head.</p>
  <p>“Please,” he protested. “I just ate.”</p>
  <p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
  <p>“It’s okay. You didn’t… It was just a question.” Longbottom shrugged and smiled. “I don’t know if you’re going to attend the duel, I might not, if it were up to me, but, well, I’m kind of…”</p>
  <p>“Soft,” Malfoy supplied, and Longbottom shrugged again.</p>
  <p>“Right,” Longbottom said. “Anyway, if you come, you can sit with us if you’d like. We’ll be in the Hufflepuff stands, of course.”</p>
  <p>“I… Sure,” Hermione said, and she looked back at her fellow delegates. “Fleur and I would love to.” She wasn’t actually that enthralled with the idea, but Fleur would like it, that much was true, and it really wouldn’t be good to skip out on things so early. Madame Maxime might think she was getting cold feet. “And I’m sure that Idalia will be going, so that’s at least three,” she added, and Longbottom nodded.</p>
  <p>It was going to be okay. This first night had gone alright, and that was going to set the tone for the rest of the year, Hermione was sure. She just had to stay attentive, keep out of trouble, and maybe not talk about politics. Easy enough.</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Madame Maxime is within an inch of Hagrid's height, putting her height between 11'5" and 11'7", which gives her a stride length of 4'8", give or take half an inch. </p><p>Columba's name comes from  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/14367483/chapters/35252981">Lady Archimedes</a>, by White_Squirrel.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Roar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: Violence.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?<br/><br/>Friedrich Schiller</p>
</blockquote><p>Because Riddle was an absolute <em>monster</em>, breakfast started at 6:45. Madame Maxime, because she would follow etiquette even with the Devil himself, insisted that everyone be present before the food appeared. It was a far cry from the relaxed mornings of Beauxbatons, and the refectory—no, the Great Hall, Hermione corrected herself—was still chilly, and short on the aroma of freshly-baked bread.<br/><br/>When she sat down to platters of back bacon and sausages, Hermione was, very momentarily, taken aback and had to mentally confirm to herself that it was Friday and she hadn’t overslept by a whole day. They simply did things differently at Hogwarts. The lack of formalities in Britain was certainly comfortable, but also a little disorienting. Then her jaw all but dropped when she saw Lino snatch a rasher of bacon on the sly—and <em>he</em> had been brought up Catholic, not just taught the peculiar courtesies of Beauxbatons.<br/><br/>(Hermione then spent several minutes ruminating on the history of Catholicism in Wizarding France, but <em>we</em> will be moving on.)<br/><br/>There were several pots of coffee all up and down the Hufflepuff table, but before long they had all made their way to the French delegation. Samara could drink it almost as fast as the pots refilled themselves, and there were others who were not far behind. Hermione was part of that rush herself, at first, but after the first cup, which she drank so fast and so hot that it nearly scalded her throat on the way down, she was able to pace herself better.<br/><br/>Now properly caffeinated, Hermione pulled out her timetable to get a look at it. She had Arithmancy and Potions on Fridays—or just Potions, today, since Arithmancy had been canceled for the Opening Duel—and Werewolf Studies on Monday mornings. There was no syllabus for that one, just a short note that the curriculum was “eclectic and flexible,” whatever that meant. Tuesdays and Thursdays were a mix of History of Magic, Transfiguration, Lunch, and Ghoul Studies, back to back to back from 9:15 to 2pm. It looked doable, but Hermione had read that the staircases at Hogwarts moved around from time to time, and that there were places that weren’t where one might expect them to be—apparently, the headmaster’s office could be very difficult to locate—and she wasn’t sure whether fifteen minutes would always be enough time to get between classes. She might have to chart out the paths ahead of time.<br/><br/>The atmosphere this morning was tense, especially among the Hufflepuffs. It was obvious, when Hermione looked, who Beatrice Haywood was. She was the dark blonde sitting at the head of the table, the closest end to the professors, and was all but surrounded by other Hufflepuffs, plus a couple of girls from the other houses. Soon enough, before breakfast was halfway through, Haywood got up from the table and slipped out from the Great Hall. She was soon followed by a Slytherin boy, whom Hermione supposed was Peregrine Derrick. Draco mentioned over breakfast that Derrick played Quidditch, and he rather looked, though Hermione knew it was rather uncharitable to think so, like he had gotten on the wrong side of a bludger a few times and not gotten properly treated for it.<br/><br/>“There are matches every year, like for Quidditch or chess,” Malfoy explained, after Longbottom made his own departure. It was ostensibly for Hermione and Fleur’s benefit, but most of his attention was on Columba. “Haywood and Derrick are the champions for the Opening Duel because they were the top-ranking Sixth Years last year.” He smiled. “This is the first time that Hufflepuff has had a champion at the Opening Duel since I arrived at Hogwarts, you know.”<br/><br/>As the meal concluded, Riddle stood, followed almost immediately thereafter by Madame Maxime and Karkaroff, and then the other professors and the students. A low, excited murmur built up as the students exited, and Hermione could hear snippets as people argued in favor of Derrick’s odds, or Haywood’s, or wondered how long the duel would take at all. Vicente and most of the other French delegates drifted away to the carriage, while Hermione, Fleur, and Idalia followed the Hufflepuffs out to the dueling grounds.<br/><br/>Duels were held in a variety of places, Hermione learned from Malfoy as they walked, but the most important duels were always held at the school’s Quidditch pitch. The usual stands were too far away and too high off the ground for most people to have a good view of a duel on the ground, but it was a simple thing to set up temporary seating that would be better-positioned for this match.<br/><br/>The pitch was ringed with tall towers and stadium seats, like a wooden colosseum, but dominated at its center by a gray limestone circle, thirty feet in diameter and three feet high. Derrick and Haywood were already there. Their robes were nearly coats, loose enough to be easily discarded, but cut short at the knees to stay out of the way. Haywood’s dark blonde hair had been tied back into a more functional bun.<br/><br/>Longbottom was already present, standing in a small crowd and talking to an older student dressed in white-and-lime green robes. As Hermione and Fleur got closer, he came over to meet them. He put one hand on Columba’s shoulder and, with his other, gestured back in the direction he’d come from. Standing off to one side of the platform was an elderly witch and seven students, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, all dressed in white and lime green uniforms. “That’s Madam Pomfrey, the matron,” Longbottom explained, leaning down a bit to get on Columba’s level, “and the rest are from Medical Magic. Mostly Seventh Years, but there’s Chrisley Rackharrow, too,” Longbottom said, pointing at a vampire with an umbrella and heavy makeup. “He’s just a Sixth Year, but he’s <em>very </em>good.”<br/><br/>“There are very many Healers,” Fleur observed.<br/><br/>Longbottom looked up at her. “It’s good to be safe. Madam Pomfrey is one of the judges, not that, uh, they score points like in some duels, but she can call a victor, if, um, things get out of control.”<br/><br/>“Is that usual?” Hermione asked.<br/><br/>“It can happen,” Longbottom answered. “The headmaster is a very great wizard, but Madame Pomfrey is a better Healer and he’ll defer to her if she thinks she has to intervene, and of course if you would have died without medi-wizards on hand, then obviously you’ve lost the duel.”<br/><br/>“No, I mean...things getting out of control.”<br/><br/>“Oh, that, um, yes, sometimes,” Longbottom said. “Really, I don’t like the thought of it, but I suppose it <em>is</em> good training. I mean, I still hope that Madam Pomfrey will pick me when my training’s got that far, St. Mungo’s really likes seeing that experience, but I guess I wish there wasn’t the need at all. I’m, um, in Medical Magic with the rest of them,” he added. “It’s ugly work, but you get to do so much good.”<br/><br/>They were able to get seats just a few rows above the ground. “This is the perfect angle,” said Malfoy, who had paid five Second Years a sickle each to leave breakfast early and secure the seats.<br/><br/>“But your sister’s down on the bottom row,” Hermione observed. At least half of the First Years were down there, by the looks of it.<br/><br/>“Dueling can be a bit...intense, especially when you’re as skilled as Haywood and Derrick,” Malfoy admitted. “There’s nothing wrong with it, of course, but still, it really is better if the platform blocks her view a bit.”<br/><br/>Flitwick made a circuit around the platform, walking slowly as if he were counting his steps, and a hush settled across the stands while he climbed onto a podium in front of the faculty stands. He tapped his wand a couple times against his mouth, then began to speak. His voice was high, even squeaking, but it carried well, as if he were talking directly into Hermione’s ear.<br/><br/>“Nothing gives me more joy than to see two of my finest students engaged in the sport and art of dueling,” he said. “For most of your peers, the single most important question is, ‘Who will win?’ I hope that I have taught you well enough that you aren’t thinking that way. If you think only of winning each match as it comes to you, then you will eventually lose, but I didn’t teach you to simply win. Dueling is the art of perfecting oneself until thought and action merge into one seamless whole. Regardless of the outcome of this match, if you have dueled earnestly, if you have gone to your uttermost limit and plumbed the well of your potential to its greatest depth, then I am proud to have been your professor for the past four years. Out of everyone here, it is the two of you who will be most truly alive in just a few moments. I will be sitting here and watching, but only the two of you will really be <em>there</em>. The real glory is already yours,” Flitwick concluded.<br/><br/>Green and yellow sparks flew from Flitwick’s wand, and Derrick let loose immediately with a salvo of spells, breaking apart the arena platform and pulverizing stone so hard that it kicked up dust. Haywood raised shields, and he smashed them. She transfigured air into a pane of thick glass, and he shattered it and brought down a rain of half-molten shards. Derrick was brutal, and Hermione could see how he had secured his place in this duel.<br/><br/>But wherever Derrick’s spells landed, Haywood was never quite present, even if she had been there just before. While Derrick lay waste from the end of his wand, Haywood simply moved. It didn’t quite matter whether it was her body or the environment or a projectile that shifted position at any given point: she upset the platform beneath them both, launched herself through the air, and moved almost like she was a gust of wind.<br/><br/>They were well-matched. Haywood was quick enough on her feet that she could evade him, but she could never land a curse on him, and the few times that she tried, Derrick came close to hitting her with a Gouging Charm or Deterioration Hex.<br/><br/>Two seats to Hermione’s left, Idalia leaned forward in rapt fascination, hardly blinking. Elsewhere, the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs cheered out or howled as the tide seemed to turn one way or the other. The Durmstrangers were generally enthusiastic, so far as Hermione could tell, but seemed to be cheering a little more strongly for Derrick. She wasn’t sure whether that was from genuine feeling or out of recognition for the table they were sitting at.<br/><br/>If Haywood’s plan had been to exhaust her opponent, then it wasn’t working. Derrick’s movements were careful, and he looked no more fatigued now than he did at the beginning of the duel. Then, whether from a desperate gambit or a measured sacrifice—Hermione couldn’t tell—Haywood threw herself almost directly into Derrick, invading his space.<br/><br/>Despite the obvious impediment, Derrick cast, and cast again with the same quick slash of his wand, and before he could cast a third time, Haywood had completed her own spell and Derrick’s face was aflame. He screamed, and burned, and fell to his knees, and burned, and burned. The fire continued to pour out of Haywood’s wand, red-orange-white and hungry, and Derrick collapsed. Only his right arm was spared, elbow resting on the ground, fingers desperately clutching his wand above the flames.<br/><br/>Hermione didn’t know how long it was before she realized that Haywood had been hurt as well. Derrick must have used Severing Charms, because she was pressing her left hand against her side, where her robes were neatly torn and bloodstained. Then Hermione saw that Haywood was favoring her left hand, and there were fingers on the arena ground, and still Derrick blazed, no longer screaming or even moaning, while his flesh blackened beneath the roaring flames.<br/><br/>Fingers closed tightly over Hermione’s shoulder. “<em>Breathe</em>,” Fleur said, and Hermione turned her eyes away and forced herself to inhale, slowly and deliberately, focusing so that there was nothing in the whole world but that breath, and the next, and the next.<br/><br/>The audience was more subdued now—solemn or shocked or just gripped by anticipation, Hermione didn’t know. Somewhere in the Hufflepuff seats, she could hear one of the younger students crying.<br/><br/>Derrick continued to burn. Hermione didn’t have to look to know it. She could hear the crackle of the flames. She could smell him, like charcoal and sulfur.<br/><br/>“If it helps, I don’t think Derrick can feel a thing right now,” Longbottom said quietly. "The way he's, I mean, when the burn goes right through your skin, you stop being able to feel it. You only feel pain in your skin so long as you have skin, you know...? At least um, that's what Madam Pomfrey says.”<br/><br/>Hermione opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She swallowed, forced down her revulsion and the urge to vomit, and tried again. “Why doesn’t anyone stop her?” she asked, almost croaking it out. “She’s <em>won</em>.”<br/><br/>In her peripheral vision, Longbottom shook his head. It was barely more than a twitch. “It isn’t over until someone forfeits or faints, or a judge calls it.”<br/><br/>“Then why doesn’t someone—”<br/><br/>“He hasn’t forfeited, he hasn’t fainted, and his life isn’t in danger.”<br/><br/>Fleur squeezed her shoulder again, and Hermione just barely restrained herself from choking the air with foul invective. “What do you mean?” Fleur asked.<br/><br/>“There are dozens of diagnostic spells running on each of them. I helped set up a few of the simpler ones this morning,” Longbottom said, his voice a little steadier. “I don’t...like it, I don’t like how it gives them more room to push themselves, but I guess I’d rather that they not get hurt, still, and they would if we messed anything up. And he’s going to get better, you know?”<br/><br/>“Then what is she doing?”<br/><br/>“Demonstrating control,” Malfoy answered. “If Derrick’s wand is damaged, then she loses, so she’s being careful to stay below the elbow. She <em>could</em> win at any point—Stun him or Sever an artery and wait until Madam Pomfrey calls the match for her—but instead she’s keeping him in-between, on fire for as long as he can stay conscious, until he passes out or the damage gets too severe.”<br/><br/>Hermione found her voice again. “Does she really hate him that much?”<br/><br/>“It isn’t about hate,” Malfoy said. “Look at her.”<br/><br/>“I don’t want to look at that.”<br/><br/>“Not at what she’s doing. Look at Haywood. Look at her face,” he urged, and Hermione did.<br/><br/>There was no hatred there, and no joy. There was nothing at all. This wasn’t sadism or malice or the settling of a duelist’s grudge, not as far as Hermione could tell. The expression on Haywood’s face was determined, focused, and nothing more. Suddenly, Haywood glanced away, looking out at the professors—at the headmaster, perhaps—but the movement was so quick that Hermione wasn’t sure it had actually happened until Malfoy spoke again.<br/><br/>“She’s auditioning,” he said. “Haywood is, by being where she is, <em>standing </em>where she is, the best student duelist at Hogwarts. She’s taken Dark Arts and Dueling, and she has top marks in a lot of other classes. But it isn’t a sure thing. Even if she were a prefect, and Head Girl, and had taken Mind Arts—and she hasn’t any of that—then it still wouldn’t be certain.”<br/><br/>Hermione turned back to Malfoy. “She wants to be a Death Eater.”<br/><br/>“There’s nothing she wants more. Her father’s a muggle, you know,” Malfoy said, as if that explained anything, as if that didn’t just make it more confusing. “But just having the right attitude isn’t enough. Every year, the headmaster picks just two or three graduates. Two years ago, he didn’t pick anyone at all. Besides, this way is good for Derrick, too, when you think about it. She’s really doing him a good turn.”<br/><br/>“What do you—”<br/><br/>Her question was interrupted by a terrible alarm, like the groaning of an iron bell, and Hermione snapped back to see Pomfrey and her assistants rushing onto the platform, their wands already moving as furiously as if they were in a duel themselves. Riddle, meanwhile, descended from his place in the stands, and amid the darkness of his robes his movement was like the slow and smooth flow of hot tar. One of the Healers tried to tend to Haywood’s wounds, but she waved him off and looked out at Riddle, as though she could meet his eyes behind the mask.<br/><br/>Hermione would have thought the duel was, in some sense, still going, that at least there ought to be some announcement, but the Hufflepuffs were already standing from their seats and heading down. The Slytherins, perhaps understandably, were slower to move, but she could still hear a few jubilant shouts from that end. When Hermione went to leave, the rush of Hufflepuff bodies nearly carried her away like a flood, and she reached the bottom almost before she knew it.<br/><br/>It had been obvious, even from where Hermione had been sitting, that Haywood could hardly stand. A pool of her own gore lay at Haywood’s feet, and her robes were near-black on the left side, but still she stood, heedless of what Hermione or anyone else expected of her. Even when Riddle gestured with his hand and Haywood leaned against the longsuffering student beside her, it was a deliberate relaxation, not an exhausted collapse, and she remained on her feet.<br/><br/>Hermione couldn’t read lips, and the air was too full of noise for her to hear what Haywood was saying, only that she was talking. Behind the mask, it was just as impossible to tell whether RIddle spoke at all, much less what, but something seemed to be going on between them. Haywood fell to her knees, and it must have been from weakness, but it reminded Hermione of nothing so much as a knight making a gesture of fealty. To Hermione’s surprise, Riddle crouched till he was at her level again. He put a gloved palm against Haywood’s forehead, and she finally closed her eyes and went limp.<br/><br/>It was impossible to tell where in the crowd Malfoy and his sister might be, or Longbottom, or anyone else, but Hermione wasn’t much interested in anyone’s conversation right now. She knew where the carriage was. Behind her, Hermione could hear the jubilant cacophony, not just of a house that had gotten its moment in the sun and triumphed, but of other students as well. She could even hear Derrick’s name shouted a few times before it all faded into a distant blur.<br/><br/>Fleur and Idalia caught up with her around then, before Hermione could make it to the carriage and disappear into a pile of books.<br/><br/>“Are you alright?” Fleur asked.<br/><br/>“I’m fine,” Hermione did not say, because that was the universal line of people who weren’t fine. “I wasn’t, but I’m doing better now. Thank you.” Wait, no, Fleur was getting wise to that one now. Fuck, she had to think of something more—<br/><br/>“Somehow, I doubt,” Fleur said, perhaps because Hermione had given that line so many times that it was a canned reflex now.<br/><br/>Hermione let her feet come to a stop. “I don’t want to—” <em>Look weak</em>. “—Talk about it.” <em>To you</em>. Was it her imagination, or could she still smell Derrick? Again, the urge to vomit rose up within her, and her throat tightened in anticipation. She could almost taste acid on the back of her tongue.<br/><br/>Fleur hugged her, and Hermione almost let herself fall apart, but the shame of that idea kept her together. She couldn’t say, not here, not so soon, that she had even the slightest regret, nor could she <em>do</em> anything. Nobody treated her like she was just fourteen, not in the delegation. Even Lino, who’d barely talked to her before yesterday, hadn’t questioned her presence here, and when she was at Beauxbatons, Fleur’s friends had never made her feel like she was just a little girl who was tagging along. Would they still feel that way if she went home? What would Fleur, who had taught her to stay strong in the face of fear, think if she ran away back to France?<br/><br/>“Let’s go back to the carriage,” she finally said, and they were silent for the rest of the way. Vicente, Samara, and a couple of the others were in the main section, playing Scrabble again. Samara rearranged some of the tiles to ask, “How was it?” and made a fleeting smile.<br/><br/>Hermione thought about how to put it into words, then Idalia saved her from further trying.<br/><br/>“It was disgusting,” Idalia said. Samara raised an eyebrow, but Idalia sprawled across a conjured chair and said nothing more.<br/><br/>“Haywood was essentially victorious, then made the school watch as she tortured her opponent until the duel was called in her favor,” Fleur said.<br/><br/>“She set him on fire,” Hermione said softly.<br/><br/>Samara tapped her slate. “Did they call the match for him, then, or did nobody win?”<br/><br/>“She still won,” Fleur said. “I expected many things from Hogwarts, but not this. Their dueling code is obviously different,” she concluded, in a tone which suggested that she’d be up all night reading about it.<br/><br/>“If they <em>have</em> a code. It looks like they duel until someone’s about to die,” Idalia said. “You don’t need a book to say, ‘everything’s fair if it isn’t permanent.’ You don’t even need a pamphlet for that.”<br/><br/>“They have a code,” Fleur insisted. “They have to. I am not saying this out of naïveté. Rules aren’t just about what you can’t do. There is an educational principle to rules. Remember, they have completely separate classes for dueling and defense.”<br/><br/>“Do you think Haywood was trying to scare us off?” Samara asked.<br/><br/>Hermione shook her head. “I was sitting next to a couple of Hogwarts students I met last night, and they were talking about some of it during the duel, and that’s not what they thought, at least.”<br/><br/>“I hope that you are frightened. Go, tell the others, and frighten them as well,” Idalia said, smirking. “Then I will be the only one to offer my name, and I will be sure to cross my wand with hers in the Tournament.”<br/><br/>“<em>I</em> will not be frightened,” Fleur said, and Hermione did not say she hoped Fleur would reconsider that. It was one thing to believe that Fleur could beat anyone, maybe even Idalia, and another thing to imagine that Hermione might be wrong, to imagine Fleur burning at the end of Haywood’s wand. Really, how could she imagine anyone like that? It was sick enough to see Derrick there on the arena platform, and she didn’t even know him.<br/><br/>“You’re sure it’ll be her?” Vicente asked.<br/><br/>Idalia rolled her head along the arm of the chair, just enough that she could—almost—face him. “She’s very clever,” Idalia said. “Wandwork requires freedom of movement, so she denied him that. Most of those spells he was using, they needed more space than he had at that point, so his options were limited. I wouldn’t recommend it, most of the time, but she must have decided she knew him well enough to predict what he would use, which let her decide how to defend herself.”<br/><br/>“But she didn’t defend herself,” Hermione said. “Those spells still hit her.”<br/><br/>Idalia shook her head. “But they didn’t hit anything important. That’s what matters. I saw her hand afterward, before she was Stunned and the Healers could do anything to her. It had been sliced through to the middle of her palm, as if she’d caught a knife in the space between two of her fingers.”<br/><br/>Vicente raised an eyebrow. “That’s going to take delicate work to mend. She won’t be doing anything with that hand tomorrow. At least the weekend is coming up. ”<br/><br/>“On Monday she will be okay no matter what she did, but this way, she is now also the best duelist in the student body. It cost her nothing, really.” Idalia stretched and made a long, loud satisfied sound. “She will be the champion. I am sure of it.”<br/><br/>“It won’t be the other one, at least,” Fleur said.<br/><br/>“Of course not. But don’t be too sorry for him,” Idalia said. “His spellwork was plenty dangerous, too. If that last Drilling Charm had gotten her, Haywood would have had a stump for a leg till next week.” Idalia shook her head again. “But the fire was something else. She could have just won.”<br/><br/>“Longbottom said something like that, about Derrick, and being able to heal him,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>“I guess that’s true,” Vicente said. “If she didn’t use Dark magic—” he looked at Idalia.<br/><br/>“She’s a Dark witch, of course, but she used nothing more serious than a Fire-Making Charm.”<br/><br/>“Then it’s treatable, though he’ll probably be in bed for a couple of weeks,” Vicente finished. “There might be some complications, but that should just mean a longer recovery time. I don’t envy his nightmares, though. There are potions for that, but it’s dangerous to use them for too long.”<br/><br/>As the conversation drifted to the potential (and highly severe) consequences of mixing pain potions, Hermione withdrew to the carriage’s (small and highly inadequate) library, but not before Fleur asked after her mind again. “Are you going to be alright?”<br/><br/>“I’ll be okay, I promise,” Hermione said. And, she <em>was</em> starting to feel better. Idalia had the right idea. When someone pushed, you pushed back.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I am extremely unsatisfied with the final sentence, but am also unsatisfied with all the alternatives I came up with. Suffice it to say, Hermione is not about to go out and light Haywood on fire in the next chapter.</p><p>Discord servers for specific fanfics/authors seems to be the hip new thing, so here you are: <a href="https://discord.gg/xjCBgff">https://discord.gg/xjCBgff</a></p><p>It's a little hodgepodge at the moment but I'll expand it as necessary. That server is also where I'll post about any of the other writing that I've done.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Seeking Knowledge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>A lack of knowledge creates fear. Seeking knowledge creates courage.</p>
  <p>Candice Swanepoel</p>
</blockquote><div>
  <p>Hermione ought to have been preparing for the afternoon’s Potions class. That’s what she wanted to be doing. She had gotten a letter from Professor Malfoy the week before, saying he had examined her grades from the past three years and corresponded with her Potions professors at Beauxbatons, and that she had been “placed in Group U,” whatever that meant. The syllabus didn’t have any references to that <em>at all</em>.</p>
  <p>Hermione needed to know what Group U was—and what that meant about Professor Malfoy’s judgment of her Potions education, obviously. The carriage’s library had brought with it a copy of every book about Hogwarts that could be found at Beauxbatons, including several that had only become available in the past year. Even so, there were not that many, and the stack of books she assembled atop the library’s desk was less than a meter high.</p>
  <p>As she searched, part of her mind continued to dwell on the Opening Duel, and especially Malfoy’s insistence that Haywood had done all that because she wanted to be a Death Eater. What was it that made that so important to Haywood? Hermione wondered what being a Death Eater meant—not to Hermione herself, who had known them for kidnappers and terrorists before she ever came to Britain, but for someone who had grown up here, who had spent seven years under Tom Riddle’s examining gaze.</p>
  <p>It wasn’t long, certainly not more than an hour, before Hermione abandoned her search for anything related to the Hogwarts Potions curriculum and cast a Revealing Charm for every occurrence of “Death Eater” in the carriage’s books. Some of what she read was straightforward, especially when the books discussed events prior to their victory in 1982, but there was a lot that they left out, too. The Death Eaters would appear every so often, sometimes in conjunction with official Ministry activities, and other times working without any mention of the Ministry, and so their relationship with the British government was frustratingly unclear.</p>
  <p>Hermione was flipping through <em>Collected Issues of the Daily Prophet, Vol. CCL </em>when the hall’s light, coming through the doorway, was suddenly and completely obscured.</p>
  <p>“Fleur said that you were studying,” said Madame Maxime.</p>
  <p>“Researching, anyway,” Hermione said as she closed another book. “History.”</p>
  <p>Hermione didn’t hear Madame Maxime approach so much as feel it, some subtle shift in the carriage floor as the headmistress approached. “If you need to talk with anyone, I will make myself available for you.”</p>
  <p>“Thank you, but I’m doing better now.” Hermione looked up and forced a smile.</p>
  <p>“I am very unhappy with the professors here, to allow such things to happen at all, and in front of children besides.”</p>
  <p>“I really am okay,” Hermione said, and she hoped that her face didn’t say otherwise. She really would be okay, if she could just, well, not think about it. That was the blessing of losing oneself in research.</p>
  <p>Madame Maxime nodded. “Then I will let you be, but my offer has not been rescinded,” she said, and then she left and Hermione was alone again—if one could ever be alone when there were books for company.</p>
  <p>Hermione didn’t depart for lunch until it was halfway over, and even then, her motivation for leaving was not hunger—which was present, but bent easily against the need to <em>read more</em>—but rather a growing pile of questions and, finally, an idea about who could answer them. While Hermione flipped through the library’s books, she had found a reference to Narcissa Malfoy, who had been granted a seat on the Wizengamot for unelaborated “services to the Ministry” in the very session that stripped a hereditary seat from her husband, Lucius Malfoy. The reformed Wizengamot’s very first act had been to pass some kind of legislation about the Death Eaters, but the author of the <em>Leges Liber XX </em>had ignored the details in favor of their true passion: the evolution of deliberative procedures in the Wizengamot. It was both frustrating and breathtaking to see how much someone could say about the <em>process</em> of making a law without explaining what that law actually did.</p>
  <p>Hm. Malfoy’s cousin was a Death Eater, wasn’t she? And his mother sat on the Wizengamot—along with her sister (Dora’s mother?), who had gotten a seat for the same reason. If there was any student who might know what was going on between the Death Eaters and the Ministry, it was probably Malfoy. With a roll of parchment and notes in hand, Hermione finally left for the Great Hall.</p>
  <p>It seemed that Longbottom and Malfoy haunted the same part of the table at every meal. Had it not been for the French delegation, they would have been sitting on the very end, and Hermione briefly wondered whether there was anything to that. Maybe for another time—as it was, her list of questions was already getting too long for her liking.</p>
  <p>Fleur had left a Hermione-sized space between herself and Longbottom, into which it was quite easy to slide. “Malfoy,” Hermione said, as soon as there was a break in his conversation with Longbottom.</p>
  <p>Malfoy swallowed and turned to look at her. “Yes?”</p>
  <p>Hermione lowered her voice. “What do Death Eaters...<em>do</em>, exactly? I know they used to be a…” She considered her words, and her audience. “...paramilitary group, I suppose, but it isn’t clear what’s going on now. I don’t have a lot of books on Britain—<em>modern </em>books, at least—and they don’t say much about it, and what little they do say about Death Eaters, they don’t always agree on. Like, <em>Modern Magical History </em>says that they were responsible for putting an end to smuggling, but <em>A Ministry History </em>says that the Death Eaters aren’t part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and <em>The Daily Prophet </em>doesn’t even mention them.”</p>
  <p>Malfoy needed little encouragement to pontificate as a learned authority, or one who at least passed as such. Death Eaters, he told her, weren’t given any official duties because nobody was officially a Death Eater. There was even a law about that, the Amnesty and Political Transparency Act, which stated that the Ministry of Magic neither forbade nor recognized Death Eater membership. There <em>was </em>such an organization, and there was a Wizengamot seat set aside for the Death Eaters, but—</p>
  <p>“Wait, wait,” Hermione interrupted. “They don’t exist, but then they’re also on the Wizengamot?”</p>
  <p>“It’s complicated,” Malfoy said. “There’s just...a seat, you see? If the Representative of Wimbourne Minster votes for something, then the Scribe marks down that there was a vote from Wimbourne Minster on a certain matter, but if the <em>other</em> seat votes, then the Scribe just marks down that there was one more vote on the matter.”</p>
  <p>“The...other seat?”</p>
  <p>Malfoy fiddled with his profiteroles, knocking them around the plate with his fork. One fell open, and garlicky cream cheese oozed out. “There isn’t, you know, a name. There’s nothing official. Columba and I have attended the sessions a few times, because my mother has a Merlin’s seat—she was given a seat on the Wizengamot for service to the Ministry, that is—and they only refer to ‘the Honorable Representative.’ Or You-Know-Who, sometimes, if you’re in private and nothing’s on the record. It’s funny, because of course we don’t know, but—”</p>
  <p>“Is it the headmaster?”</p>
  <p>Malfoy shook his head. “Hogwarts has had a seat on the Wizengamot since before it <em>was</em> the Wizengamot, and the headmaster rarely misses a session.”</p>
  <p>“Okay.” Hermione thought about this. “You said that they aren’t officially told to do anything, but there isn’t officially a Death Eater on the Wizengamot, either, and yet there is, actually. So what do they do?”</p>
  <p>“They safeguard Britain,” Malfoy said, and then, when Hermione’s expression must have made clear that his answer needed some elaboration, “I don’t know. I think there’s one on the Azkaban Oversight Committee, but none of it is official.”</p>
  <p>“How many Death Eaters are there?” Hermione asked.</p>
  <p>“One, but it wears a lot of different masks beneath its face,” Malfoy said, and Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, it’s one of Dora’s jokes.” He smiled, then his face scrunched up in thoughtfulness. “Maybe… There are many more who fought on our side, of course, and many of those were considered Death Eaters—or, they were called Death Eaters back then, and they wore the mask and robe…” Malfoy shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s confusing. I guess there are maybe a hundred, you know, <em>Death Eaters</em>.”</p>
  <p>Hermione <em>didn’t</em> know, and rather wondered what he meant by that, but she rather suspected, as well, that he didn’t quite know either.</p>
  <p>“Do you think I could talk to your cousin about it?” is what Hermione very nearly asked, before her brain checked itself, realized that this was maybe one of those cases where the pursuit of knowledge was best deferred (or at least conducted a little more surreptitiously) and caught up to her mouth before it could do something stupid. Instead, Hermione let the matter lie (for now), and asked after another matter that had been on her mind. “Hogwarts has a library, right? Do you think I would be allowed in? Can you tell me where it is?”</p>
  <p>“Sure,” said Longbottom. “It’s on the First Floor, actually. We could show you right after lunch, in the free period before Potions.”</p>
  <p>Hermione turned to Fleur. “I’m going to be checking out the Hogwarts Library after lunch. Do you want to come with us?”</p>
  <p>“Alas, I cannot. Idalia is convinced that the Tournament will involve a direct confrontation between champions at some point, and that she must learn how to throw a punch in case Haywood makes casting too difficult. I have already promised to spend some time with her after lunch.”</p>
  <p>“I didn’t know that you were a master of fisticuffs.”</p>
  <p>“I am not, but the year before you came to Beauxbatons, Noor Goosens called me a whore and I knocked her out.” Fleur shrugged. “That is enough for Idalia.”</p>
  <p>Because Fleur encouraged her to do so, and because there wasn’t anything better to do while she waited for her guides to finish eating, Hermione (reluctantly, still caring more about this puzzle she had uncovered) snacked on a soft brown cheese from a nearby platter. Longbottom and Malfoy didn’t know what it was, so she supposed it was some of Durmstrang’s cuisine.</p>
  <p>On the way to the library, Hermione realized that she could also—possibly, hopefully—get an answer to her very first question. “I got a letter about Potions,” Hermione said, “and Professor Malfoy said that I had been placed in something called Group U. What is that about?”</p>
  <p>“Draco’s father divides all the Potions classes, from Second Year on, into five groups,” Longbottom explained.</p>
  <p>“Sometimes there are six groups,” Malfoy interjected.</p>
  <p>“Or six groups, if there are a lot of students,” Longbottom amended. “In First Year, he mixes everybody up a lot, putting people in different groups and figuring out who you work well with and where your strengths are. Then, starting in Second Year, you get assigned to a group: F, U, Þ, A, or R. Or K,” he added, as Malfoy opened his mouth again. “That way, you’re working with your real peers, you see? Group U isn’t that bad, I mean, sometimes I feel out of my depth, or a lot of the time, actually, but I can do okay, and Professor Malfoy says it’s good to make ourselves stretch.”</p>
  <p>“Yes, but what does Group U <em>mean</em>? I was told that it had something to do with my Potions grade.”</p>
  <p>“Oh, right, well, they’re basically ranked from best to worst, you see?</p>
  <p>“You probably deserve to be in Group F, but I don’t think my father would ever put you there, no matter how good your grades were,” Malfoy admitted.</p>
  <p>“Because I’m…” Hermione trailed off. A mudblood? English? The usual prejudices probably weren’t in play here, even if Malfoy was still a secret blood purist like Professor McGonagall believed.</p>
  <p>“Because you’re just visiting,” Malfoy explained. “It would be an insult to put you in the bottommost ranks, obviously, but if you were in Group F then some of F’s resources would be diverted to you.”</p>
  <p>“Wait, I still think I’m not following. You have different <em>resources</em>? You mean, potion supplies?”</p>
  <p>Malfoy nodded. “Right. Group F gets to grab ingredients first, so we can pick out the best of what’s available, and if there are extra tools that we need, then we’re first for those, too, and of course we get a lot of his attention in class. My father says that there are some really valuable mushrooms that grow only in cow dung, so you can’t always know where talent will come from, but when it’s there, it’s <em>there</em>, and it’s no use wringing water from a stone.”</p>
  <p>“So your father just ignores everybody who isn’t good enough?” Hermione asked.</p>
  <p>“Merlin, no!” Malfoy said quickly. “Honestly, he spends most of his time with the Rs and Ks. They’re the students who need extra guidance just to pass, or even just to not melt their cauldrons.”</p>
  <p>“Group U is actually nice like that,” Longbottom said. “Professor Malfoy will get really disappointed if I don’t do as well as he thinks I can, and one time he sent my parents a letter, and then <em>they </em>sent me a howler, but if I had been put in Group F then I might have died. Honestly, it’s a lot better to not be put there. I heard that he wrote to Macmillan’s parents last year just because his Blood-Clotting Potion was dark pink instead of puce.”</p>
  <p>“He did,” Malfoy said, grimacing. “And then the Macmillans were invited over for dinner, so that he could confer with all three of them, and obviously his parents were thrilled to accept. It was like watching an execution, except that I had to pretend that I still had an appetite while it went on, all the adults going on about what <em>oh, a fine boy he was</em>, but <em>what a disappointment it was</em>,” Malfoy went on, throwing in what Hermione could only assume were impressions of his father and the Macmillans, “and I had to smile and not and pretend that Macmillan wasn’t ready to gnaw off his leg to escape, because then Father would talk to <em>me</em> about not caring about a fellow student’s education.” The expression on Malfoy’s face made it look as though he were melting. “The color doesn’t even matter that much. It doesn’t have to be bloody <em>puce</em>!”</p>
  <p>“But if you do not reach for the clouds then you will eat with the worms in the mud,” both boys said in unison.</p>
  <p>“I love my father,” said Malfoy, “but I cannot imagine a worse Potions professor.”</p>
  <p>When they arrived at the entrance to the Hogwarts Library, Longbottom and Malfoy both reminded her to be as silent as possible. “Madam Pince doesn't, um, do anything really awful to us, she doesn’t even send us to detention,” Longbottom said, “but you’re not a Hogwarts student, so I don’t know if that would apply to you.”</p>
  <p>“I’m not sure any of the professors here can give me detention,” Hermione said. “I should look into that, actually. They can’t take points away from me when I’m not part of a house, but I don’t think Madame Maxime would appreciate…” She trailed off. There was too little she knew about how things worked here, and she still wasn’t in the mood to make light of what she did know.</p>
  <p>The door to the Hogwarts Library was plastered with admonitions to treat the books kindly (“like flat, faithful, and unfortunately-flammable friends,” according to one flyer), to return books on time, and to never, <em>never</em> disturb the quiet sanctity of the library. Immediately inside was Madam Pince, vulture-faced custodian of the books and the school’s only official Librarian. As they crossed through the door, she regarded them with a stern, appraising look, and after Pince passed from their sight, Hermione let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding in.</p>
  <p>There was no card catalog per se, as the muggle libraries in Paris had, but there was a simple map of the Hogwarts Library that conveyed the general layout and marked a few points of interest, and every so often Hermione passed by a thick tome, sitting on—and chained to—a granite pedestal. These, she found upon cracking one open, listed the books which were stored in that particular section, and even gave their current status: Volume XLIX of <em>The Collected Correspondence and Commentaries of Nicolas Flamel</em>, for example, had been checked out for the summer and was supposed to be returned by the end of tomorrow.</p>
  <p>What she needed was history and politics, but the Hogwarts Library had a...<em>special</em> organization style and, while Hermione had grown to accept the idiosyncrasies of the library at Beauxbatons, it was altogether too much to find that Hogwarts had found its own way to befuddle and bemuse her. There was, quite simply, too much to look for, let alone read, in the short period that Hermione had until she needed to report for Potions, so Hermione returned to the front and did the only thing she could: risk life and limb (or at least possible discipline) to talk to the Librarian.</p>
  <p>“Madam Pince?” Hermione asked, as quietly and softly as she could muster. The vulture-woman lifted her head, and Hermione nearly quailed beneath the sharpness of her gaze. “I was wondering if I could borrow books from the Library. I’m visiting from—”</p>
  <p>Before Hermione could finish, Madam Pince slid a sheet of parchment across her desk and placed a freshly-inked quill on top of it. “Read every rule twice,” she said, in a voice so quiet it was almost a kind of word-shaped hollowness in the air, “and then sign here, here, and here. I will not hesitate to enforce the terms.”</p>
  <p>Quill in hand, Hermione looked over the parchment.</p>
</div><div>
  <p></p>
  <blockquote>
    <p>
      <strong>Rules of the Hogwarts Library</strong>
    </p>
    <p>
      <em>Do not speak in the library. Whispering is a categorically different kind of noise-making than speech, and is permitted.<br/><br/>Do not eat, drink, or by any other means or in any other sense consume any substance in the library. Nothing should pass by your lips or nostrils except for air.<br/><br/>Do not enter the library in a state of befuddlement, bewitchment, or intoxication.<br/><br/>Do not damage the books. Damage includes but is not limited to wettening any part of the book, dog-earing and other kinds of folding, writing (in the margins or elsewhere), exposing the book to bright light for too long a period, applying oil to the binding (or any other part of the book), biting the book, tearing, setting on fire or exposing to smoke, removing the stitching, placing the book in a humid environment, using the book as a hot pad, feeding the book to insects (including bookworms, woodworms, and other kinds of worm), opening the book and leaving it face-down against a flat surface, handling the books with dirty hands, snapping the binding, adding tape, removing tape, and wiping your phlegm on the books.<br/><br/>Do not cause a disturbance in the library, whether aural, gustatory, olfactory, tactile, or visual, or of any other nature.<br/><br/>Do not commit illegal acts in the library.<br/><br/>Do not bring beasts or small children into the library.<br/><br/>Do not enter the Restricted Section without a note of permission from a professor.<br/><br/>Do not remove books from the library before they are checked out by the Librarian, and do not fail to return the books within seven days after they are checked out. The Librarian’s schedule for each week may be found at the door and at the Librarian’s desk.<br/><br/>Do not enter the library before it opens, or attempt to remain inside after it has closed. The Hogwarts Library will be open from eight-o’clock in the morning to eight-o’clock in the evening, except for Fridays and Saturdays, when it will close at ten-o’clock, on every day from the beginning of the school year to its end.</em>
    </p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>Hermione signed her name three times in careful, flowing script, then handed it back to Madam Pince, who accepted it with a curt nod and rifled through one of the desk’s many drawers.<br/><br/>“It’s odd,” she whispered. “You’re already on the list. Did you sign anything before you came to Hogwarts?”<br/><br/>“Not for the Library, but perhaps Madame Maxime did something on our behalf.”<br/><br/>The Librarian shook her head. “I wouldn’t allow that. Everyone must sign for themselves.”<br/><br/>Hermione thought about that, and summoned up the courage to advance the most likely possibility. “I was born in Britain, but then my parents moved to France before my accidental magic manifested, and so I went to Beauxbatons. Do you think that I might have been put down for the rolls somehow?<br/><br/>“That could be it. I wouldn’t have thought so, however,” she continued, “because Headmaster Riddle keeps a close eye on the Book of Admittance and alerts the Muggle Liaison Office the moment that he learns there’s a muggle-born who needs, well… As you said, you must have moved to France before that could have happened, and afterward, I don’t see how you would have gotten into the Book. We can’t keep track of accidental magic beyond Britain, after all. The charmwork isn’t set up for it.”<br/><br/>Hermione shrugged and nodded, adding the matter to a growing stack of mysteries, and signed one more sheet, a little slip that bestowed upon its holder the right to borrow books from the Hogwarts Library. With a hushed thank-you, and an abashed and silent apology after Madam Pince scolded her for making noise, Hermione returned to the depths of the stacks to collect what she could before she had to leave for class.<br/><br/>Ten books was a normal, reasonable amount to borrow, wasn’t it? She could see over the top of them without stretching her neck, anyway, which was the most important thing. There were two by Tom Riddle himself, <em>Magic is Might</em> and <em>Unity is Strength</em>, and a couple that were <em>about </em>him—<em>Tom Riddle: British Cincinnatus</em> and <em>Dark Radical</em>, which at least by their covers promised very different perspectives on the man—and then a variety of histories: <em>British Society 1692-1964</em>, and <em>Lambs and Lions: Britain in the New Era</em>, and a newer edition of <em>Hogwarts: A History, </em>and so forth.<br/><br/>Hermione had tried to give herself an adequate amount of time to reach the Potions classroom, even accounting for the fact that she might get a bit lost and that people regularly underestimated how long it would take for them to do something, but even so, she arrived just in the nick of time. If Longbottom hadn’t already offered a place to partner up with her, Hermione almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of anything before the class began, but as it was, all she would need to do was take her place beside him—and there he was, standing next to a stringy-looking boy in Ravenclaw Blue—and figure out the rest as she went along.<br/><br/>As Hermione took her place and put her things on the floor, Professor Malfoy took the roll call. Hermione’s name was last, but she very intently did not take offense at that. For all she knew (and she tried hard to keep this in mind), Professor Malfoy never rewrote the list for a given year, and he just wrote her name at the bottom because he’d never planned for a transfer student.<br/><br/>On the blackboard, Professor Malfoy had already written out the recipe and ingredients for the day’s potion. “The Shrinking Solution is a temperamental potion,” he began, “and it requires care, but you can afford to take your time. You will not be graded on speed, only on the quality of the end product. With that in mind, please remember the following: Your potion requires a very precise amount of daisy root, but you will be cutting wormwood as well. To avoid potential contamination, I suggest you add the daisy root before you prepare the wormwood, then conjure a pristine cloth to clean your knife. If the potion is ruined by a surfeit of daisy root, then you will not know it until you are wondering why, at the very end, your Shrinking Solution has not turned the right shade of green.”<br/><br/>Professor Malfoy pointed to the fourth item on the ingredients list. “Be sure to <em>juice</em> the leeches, keeping out all solid tissues. If you aren’t sure, then feed the juice through a linen filter to separate out any contaminants. The Shrinking Solution will still achieve its end if you make a mistake at this stage, but it will <em>also </em>produce an unpleasant inflammation of the blood vessels.”<br/><br/>He moved to the item below that. “Lastly, be gentle when you shake the rat spleen, like you are using it to stir a cup of tea, and examine the spleen for external damage before you add it to the cauldron, and again after you remove it. You need only the most rarefied <em>hint </em>of black bile, and any leakage will totally ruin the Shrinking Solution. If you suspect there was leakage, then add swine’s snout petals at a rate of one every thirty seconds until your potion develops a dull yellow color, <em>exactly </em>as you see it on page 147 of your textbook, and then proceed to the next step. Ameliorating the black bile will probably be a time-consuming process, so it is best to do things right if you can.”<br/><br/>While Group F gathered their ingredients, Longbottom made introductions. “Granger, this is Theodore Nott,” he said, gesturing to the stringy-looking boy. “Theo, Hermione Granger, from Beauxbatons.”<br/><br/>“Good afternoon, Nott. It’s nice to meet you,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>Nott scribbled something onto a bit of parchment, then glanced up. “Likewise.”<br/><br/>“We also partner up in Medical Magic together,” Longbottom said. “And him and Draco are in Mental Magic, too, just not on the same day.”<br/><br/>“I get it with the Slytherins on Monday and Wednesday,” Nott said.<br/><br/>“Mental Magic is the class that the headmaster teaches personally, right?” asked Hermione.<br/><br/>Nott nodded. “We’re going to be working mostly on pensieves and memory magic. The headmaster knows so much about <em>everything</em>, but especially about pensieves. They’re something of a special interest of his. And we’re supposed to prepare for Occlumency next year as well. I tell you, I don’t know how I’m going to stay on top of everything this year.”<br/><br/>“Maybe it’d be easier if you weren’t taking a third elective, Theo,” Longbottom said.<br/><br/>“Go get our ingredients, Neville,” Nott said with a tone of mock offense, and Longbottom departed, grinning.<br/><br/>“You’re taking three?” asked Hermione.<br/><br/>“Dark Arts, right after Mental Magic. Of course, I’d have taken four if they let me, but they didn’t, so I’m—<em>trying</em>—to study Ancient Runes on my own. It <em>is</em> a lot, I’ll admit, but so far I’ve been able to make it work.”<br/><br/>Part of Hermione was impressed, and more than a little bit sympathetic for Nott’s plight, but she still side-eyed him. “We don’t have the Dark Arts at Beauxbatons.”<br/><br/>“Of course you don’t,” Nott said amiably. “It’s messy stuff, and dangerous.”<br/><br/>“Then why do you take it?”<br/><br/>Nott froze for a moment, mouth shut and hands hovering over the cutting board. He resumed arranging the workspace, but it took a couple more seconds before he said anything. “Have you ever explored a cave, Granger?”<br/><br/>“No.”<br/><br/>“My father and I used to all the time, before I came to Hogwarts. There’s this cave I went to in Wales, once, where you have to crawl, almost slither, for almost an hour before you get anywhere that’s big enough to stand up. When you get there, you can put out your light, and the darkness goes on forever. It’s older and deeper than anything that could be imagined. If you stayed forever then you’d lose yourself, and I guess there are people who lose themselves to Dark magic, too, but… Let me put it like this: I’m never going to stay in those caves forever, but I’m always going to go back. Oh, Neville, welcome back, pass the daisy roots, will you?”<br/><br/>Hermione kept her focus on the Shrinking Solution for the rest of their lesson. It wasn’t very difficult to figure out, but this was her first potion at Hogwarts—her first class at all—and she didn’t want to be the weak link on their team. She didn’t know what to make of Nott’s explanation, and wasn’t sure that she wanted to know more, so when Nott left at the end of class to get an early start on his studying, Hermione let him go without any follow-up questions.<br/><br/>There was an hour until dinner started, but Hermione headed to the Great Hall anyway. Fleur would come looking for her if she was absent from dinner, and was unlikely to let her skip another meal. Madame Maxime might complain, too. The basilisk was apparently a fan of correspondence chess, according to <em>Hogwarts: A History</em>, and fairly good at it (for a giant snake), but neither Hermione nor Bathilda Bagshot could quite figure out the logistics that made this possible. The bloody thing didn’t even have hands. How was it supposed to write letters? “Some believed” that it was really the headmaster who was playing chess on the other end, and it was pretty clear that Bagshot was among their number but didn’t want to come out and just say that Tom Riddle was a dirty liar.<br/><br/>Hermione hardly noticed the beginning of dinner, and scarcely realized Fleur was there until the other girl made herself known.<br/><br/>“Eat something,” Fleur urged, but Hermione shook her head.<br/><br/>“Can’t. Madam Pince might see.” It might have been her imagination, but Hermione could almost feel the Librarian’s eyes boring into her skull, just for bringing books into the Great Hall at mealtime. It might not have been against the rules that she’d just agreed to follow a couple hours ago, but Hermione still felt uneasy about bringing the books near any food, and there was probably a charm that would let Madam Pince know that food had ever been in contact with the pages, even if Hermione cleaned it afterward. “Just give me five more minutes.”<br/><br/>“You’ve said that before.”<br/><br/>“I...have?” Alright, now that she thought about it she did have a sort of vague sense that someone might have said something at some point, but… “Are you sure?”<br/><br/>“I am quite certain.”<br/><br/>“Well, just five more minutes,” Hermione said, and Fleur must have given up because she didn’t notice anything more until—<br/><br/>“<em>French Girl</em>,” Hermione heard, in that sort of tone which suggested this was not the first time she’d been spoken to, and Hermione startled and looked up.<br/><br/>“You’re really into the books,” said what-was-her-name, the redhead, the...Ginny, that was it.<br/><br/>“I… Yes,” Hermione admitted. She could hear Fleur chuckling on her left.<br/><br/>Ginny smiled. “Figures. I was trying to get your attention for a couple minutes. Hermione, right?” she asked, and then, “I wanted to invite you to Portrait Club tomorrow. It’s our first meeting of the year and—”<br/><br/>“But I don’t know how to paint.”<br/><br/>“No, it’s nothing like that! We just watch the portraits talk to each other.” Ginny sighed. “It’s actually a lot better than that sounds. Some of the portraits <em>hate</em> each other, and… Well, I heard that you had a hard time this morning and I thought it might cheer you up. It’s funny.”<br/><br/>“What time is it?” Hermione was, truth be told, curious about what the British got up to—what she, in another life, had things gone just a little differently, would have gotten up to—and was especially interested in seeing a side of them that didn’t involve grievous mutilation.<br/><br/>“Seven-o’clock, not long after dinner ends.”<br/><br/>That would give Hermione plenty of time to continue reading, as well. “That sounds good,” Hermione said, and she returned to her...empty space on the table where <em>Hogwarts: A History </em>had been.<br/><br/>Hermione glared up at Fleur. “You stole my book while I wasn’t paying attention!”<br/><br/>“So I did. Now eat,” Fleur said, and her triumphant smile was almost enough to make Hermione forgive her. Almost. Book theft was a heavy sin.</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>In another universe, the title of this chapter is "Doors are Everywhere," and the opening quote is "Seeking knowledge is like opening doors. And I know the doors are everywhere," by Georges St. Pierre. </p><p>The Revealing Charm is canon, but its use as a magical Ctrl+F comes from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22022296/chapters/52554820">Blood Crest</a>, by Cauchy. </p><p>F, U, Þ, A, R, and K are the first six runes of Futhark, just like a(lpha) and b(beta) are the first two letters of the alphabet. Þ makes a "th" sound and is pronounced "thurisaz" or "thorn" (þorn).</p><p>Join us on the Discord server: <a href="https://discord.gg/xjCBgff">https://discord.gg/xjCBgff</a>.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Building Bridges</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There will be a hiatus. Chapters will resume posting on Ao3 on 18 February.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Building bridges is the best defence against ignorance.</p>
  <p>Aaron Lauritsen</p>
</blockquote><p>At the High Table, the professors ate. Professor Kettleburn, seemingly more scar tissue than wizard, had only one hand, and so his cutlery danced around his plate of its own accord to slice and spear his food. Another professor, whom Hermione didn’t recognize from McGonagall’s photos, ate slowly and oddly, slicing her food into miniscule portions and swallowing without chewing, hardly even moving her jaws. Her eyes were wide and owl-like, her cheekbones high, her face sickly-pale.<br/><br/>Riddle, Hermione noticed, ate nothing. In fact, she couldn’t recall ever seeing him eat anything, tonight or at any other meal. Every now and then she saw him pick something off a platter, but he invariably handed it off to the black dog that lay at his feet. On either side of him, Karkaroff ate like an ordinary person and Madame Maxime ate and drank in prodigious quantities—which was to say, like an ordinary person of unordinary size—but Riddle ate nothing whatsoever. Even Professor Lupin, who ate very little, and with apparent reluctance, at least ate at all.<br/><br/>Before the platters Vanished themselves, Riddle piled up a heap of shepherd’s pie and pumpkin pie and put the plate on the ground. Then, when the platters were gone, Riddle stood and waited until silence settled in the Great Hall.<br/><br/>“I hope that everyone, students and guests alike, has had a pleasant first day at Hogwarts,” he said. “It is now time to present the Goblet of Fire, and begin the first phase of the Triwizard Tournament: the choosing of champions.” In a corner of the Great Hall was a house-elf, dressed in a bright motley of clothing and carrying a jeweled casket. It was nearly as large as the house-elf, but he seemed to have no trouble with that, whether through elvish magic or the lightness of the casket itself.<br/><br/>Riddle crouched down to take the casket with both hands, then set it on the High Table. “Thank you, Dobby,” he said, and the house-elf disapparated. Hermione hadn’t known that was possible, but maybe the headmaster could selectively permit certain individuals to violate the Anti-Disapparition Jinx, or maybe house-elves could simply elude some forms of wizarding magic.<br/><br/>While Hermione ruminated, Riddle acted, and by the time Hermione remembered that there was a world outside her brain, the Goblet of Fire was on full display. It was less beautiful than she had imagined: the wood was white, with a few brown streaks that marred the surface more than adorned it, and the cup had been inexpertly carved, as though an apprentice woodcarver had worked on it. Even so, someone had seen fit to select it for the Tournament and laid any number of enchantments upon it. Already it was full of blue fire, burning gently without fuel and almost spilling over the brim.<br/><br/>“The Triwizard Tournament is a competition between our three schools, but it is also an opportunity to bind ourselves together in a spirit of fellowship. It is an event that brings together the students of Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts, and nowhere else. Only three of you will have the honor of representing these schools in the Tournament, but everyone here already holds the distinction of attending these schools at all.” A cheer went out from the Slytherin table, but quieted before Hermione could look over and identify its source.<br/><br/>“The champions will experience three trials,” Riddle continued, “each of which will be <em>exacting</em> in its own way. There will be danger here, even if death itself will probably not be present, and I caution anyone against entering the Tournament lightly. The Tournament will represent us to each other, but the trials will be attended by the official representatives of other schools and other countries, so anyone whose conduct brings shame on themselves will besmirch the reputation of us all, and be remembered with disdain by each of our schools.” Riddle paused briefly. “Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and Hogwarts like to consider themselves the three greatest schools of magic in the world. We can debate the exact placement, but this is <em>your</em> opportunity to prove that there are at least no better schools than ours—or perform poorly, and open ourselves to the scorn of the entire world.”<br/><br/>Riddle paused for a moment, perhaps to let that sink in. “The Goblet of Fire will remain here in the Great Hall, behind the High Table. At any time, you may make yourself a candidate by writing your name and school on a bit of parchment and putting it into the Goblet of Fire. Next Friday, after dinner, the Goblet of Fire will select three champions to represent our schools. There is no year restriction, but again I warn you against submitting your name without thinking long and hard about it. The Goblet of Fire will know your true potential, or so it is said, but you may be unwilling to make the sacrifices which are necessary to achieve that potential. Putting your name in the Goblet of Fire makes you party to a binding, magical contract. Any champion who refuses to participate will be disqualified, and disqualification will mean expulsion. If you are chosen, then your only choice will be to walk along the path that is set out for you, or hope that you can find education outside Western Europe.”<br/><br/>A small stand was conjured for the Goblet of Fire, and then Riddle departed. A few students gathered around the Goblet of Fire almost as soon as Riddle left, but most, it seemed, were willing to give the thing some space for now. Even Haywood, Hermione noticed, didn’t put her name in that night, and after ten or fifteen minutes the Great Hall was largely empty again. Unobscured by student bodies, the Goblet of Fire flickered white-blue and the flames rose high, reminding her of Peregrine Derrick’s body and the torture—the sheer <em>damage </em>that Haywood had inflicted on him. Even when she turned away, nose deep in <em>Hogwarts: A History</em>, she could hear crackling of the fire, and though she had to be imagining it, Hermione could even smell the burnt-meat charcoal-and-sulfur of the arena stage.<br/><br/>After Hermione returned to the carriage, she spent half an hour on Scrabble with Samara and Vicente, just long enough to make sure she could retire to bed without making anyone concerned. It <em>had </em>been a long day, and she hadn’t simply retreated to her room at the first available opportunity, so she had to be doing alright. Whether she was trying to convince herself or just the others, however, her sleep was certainly troubled. It would have been nice to remember her dreams, or even a snatch of something that she could examine or record, something she could <em>deal with</em>, but she awoke with nothing but a lingering sense of unease. Through the haze of not-quite-wakefulness, she became aware that Fleur was there and asking if she was going to be coming for breakfast.<br/><br/>The prospect of eating in the Great Hall was frankly unappetizing, and would be for as long as the Goblet of Fire remained there, but Hermione didn’t need to read any tea leaves to know that Fleur would have something to say about that, so she told Fleur that she was sleeping in and would make sure to get out before breakfast ended. Fleur seemed doubtful but allowed it, and Hermione took her blessed time to drag herself out of bed, wash up, and force herself to the Great Hall. She got there only a few minutes before the stroke of nine-o’clock, but still managed to grab a buckwheat crepe and some apple slices before the platters Vanished.<br/><br/>“See?” Hermione said, when Fleur arched an eyebrow.<br/><br/>Fleur smiled, and if she was bothered by Hermione’s subsequent withdrawal from the Great Hall then Hermione left too quickly to see it.<br/><br/>It was <em>incredibly</em> poor manners to walk and eat at the same time, and she hadn’t even taken time to peel the apples, but Hermione didn’t care. Her paltry breakfast was finished before she returned to the carriage, and then her only regret was that she hadn’t taken more. It had been easy to ignore her stomach before it had gotten a bit of food, and now it was as awake as the rest of her.<br/><br/>Hermione responded with the one thing that could crowd out her mind of any other concerns, and returned to <em>Hogwarts: A History</em>. Soon enough, she learned that an heirloom artifact of the school’s founders, the sword of Godric Gryffindor, was on display on the third floor, in the very place where Tom Riddle had used it to kill Dumbledore (Bagshot took pains not to put it quite like that, but Hermione could read between the lines).<br/><br/>Technically, the sword was only on loan to Hogwarts. Bagshot, who was writing the history of a school and not the whole country, only glossed over the details, but she had provided enough information for Hermione to dig up the rest of the story. According to <em>Lambs and Lions</em>, the Wizengamot had been exceedingly active following its reformation in early 1983. Non-wizards were allowed to carry wands, though issues of supply and the need for training meant that some people were still on the waiting list (at least as of 1989, when <em>Lambs and Lions</em> was published). Wolfsbane Potion was made freely available to any werewolves to wanted it, and for those who didn’t, monthly portkeys were created to send them to “island reserves,” stocked with game and forbidden even to many members of the Ministry. Aristocratic estates—including Malfoy Manor—were seized. The Muggle-born Protection Act was enacted, and the first abduction-adoptions were carried out almost before the ink had dried.<br/><br/>The Wizengamot hadn’t neglected the goblins amid all this. Most relevantly to Hermione’s current topic of research, Riddle had overseen the Chattels and Remainders Law, which provided that the laws of the goblin Redeguild would <em>retroactively </em>take precedence in all economic dealings with goblins and wizards. The way Bagshot put it, Riddle had technically owned the Sword of Gryffindor for a time, either because he drew it from the Sorting Hat or because he was the school’s headmaster, but in any case, the Chattels and Remainders Law made all that moot. His ownership, such as it might have been, didn’t even extend into 1983, because he had voluntarily relinquished any right he might have had.<br/><br/>It was now owned by Forkog Goadslab, heir to the ancient Ragnuk who had forged the sword of Gryffindor, and only remained at Hogwarts because it was Riddle who had made the request. However much Bagshot seemed to dislike it—and she spent almost a whole page to explain why Hogwarts would never be forced to part with one of its treasures—it was exceedingly unlikely that Forkog would extend that privilege to the next headmaster.<br/><br/>Eventually, Hermione was able to pull herself away from her books in order to grab lunch. That meant returning to the Great Hall, where she slapped tomatoes and cheese between a couple slices of sourdough and made off for the carriage again. This time Hermione was able to wait until she was sitting, but it did bother her a little that she didn’t have any cutlery. Etiquette probably didn’t actually apply in the privacy of her own room, but the wrongness of it was still there, like an unscratchable itch in the back of her brain or right where the Auto-Hexer had lain on her wrist.<br/><br/>The most extraordinary and pleasant thing about the carriage was not that it contained a library, or even that there was enough space that everyone had their own (admittedly small) bedroom, but the fact that every window provided roughly the same view of the Black Lake. It was not nearly so black now, with the light of the afternoon sun shining overhead, but there was a seeming bottomless to it even so. She could see Vicente enter the water along with some Durmstrang students, while a couple Slytherins looked on in disbelief from the shore. Not far off from them, Idalia was practicing solo drills, moving with a sharp, determined grace that belied her ordinary languidness. Outside, everything was beautiful, and the view felt so far away from the dueling arena of the day before.<br/><br/>Hermione didn’t write letters home every week, but when she did, she wrote her letters on Saturday so that she would have Sunday free to prepare for the next week’s classes. It was her first week abroad, and her parents would be expecting something, so she reluctantly left her books alone, put away her notebooks, and set out some nice stationary in their place. There was no telling whether she would still be up for writing letters tonight after dinner and Portrait Club, so she had to accomplish it now.<br/><br/>The easiest letter to write was to Hermione’s grandparents. They still didn’t know what she really was (<em>who</em> she was, whispered an uncomfortable voice in her head), so every conversation with them had already been, on some level, a lie. There were countries where the grandparents of a muggle-born witch could be told about magic, but France wasn’t one of them. They knew only that she was attending a boarding school on the border, but it had high entrance standards and Hermione was happy there, so they couldn’t be more satisfied.<br/><br/>Miranda wasn’t much harder. Hermione couldn’t exactly promise pictures of Hogwarts, or even the local landscape, because their parents could probably tell the difference between Norway and Scotland and Hermione wasn’t ready for <em>that </em>conversation, but there had to be something that could be photographed. Miranda would probably like the dungeons; she was getting melodramatic these days, and would more than likely make an excellent goth in just a few years.<br/><br/>However, writing to her parents was a challenge. She could make things up, and it wouldn’t matter if her story broke apart after she returned because she would be back by then and there’d be nothing to do about it at that point, but it was still uncomfortable. Lies of omission felt different than an outright fabrication. At least then, if and when Hermione came clean, there would just be some gaps to fill. Except for the Norway thing, but she had to say she was going <em>somewhere</em>, and besides, one lie was not the same as one thousand.<br/><br/>In the end, Hermione wrote about her classes, which she knew would be perfectly in character for her, and about the food, to the extent that she could definitely recognize which cuisine belonged to Durmstrang (mentioning anything that was too obviously British might raise suspicions). The odd system that Professor Malfoy employed in his classroom was surely safe to bring up, and Portrait Club didn’t sound like it would be that bad.<br/><br/>She went to dinner late, and didn’t regret the delay one bit. The Great Hall was full of the smell of roast meat. If she so much as looked to her right, she could see the Goblet of Fire on the other side of the room, its flames flickering and dancing just behind Headmaster Riddle. Somewhere down the Hufflepuff table, there was a wisp of conversation and laughter broke out in response to a joke she couldn’t quite hear—Haywood’s voice was somewhere in the mix.<br/><br/>Unbidden, Hermione’s mind conjured visions of the duel, and Haywood standing triumphant—over, Derrick, over Idalia, over <em>Fleur</em>—and she absently fingered the glass beetle pin on the inside of her collar. She wished that she could summon Maxime’s help for someone else. It wouldn’t do any good. Everyone had chosen to be here, and to stay here. She alone had been given a way out, because she was young, weak, in danger.<br/><br/>Hermione picked over a mushroom quiche, and at Fleur’s insistence had a bit of almond caramel cake, but if any of it hit her tongue then she didn’t notice. When Ginny came to fetch her for Portrait Club, it was a relief to have an excuse to leave. To make conversation along the way, Hermione asked what her family did for a living. Hermione expected the answer to be short, but it turned out that Ginny had rather a lot of family.<br/><br/>Ginny’s mother kept the family gardens and tended to their animals—the Weasleys had a coop full of chickens and several pigs—and this accounted for most of what landed on the dinner table. Her father worked as some sort of freelance handiwizard, occasionally enchanting things but mostly fixing the enchantments that other people laid down, and even performing a few difficult disenchantments whenever someone’s inherited trunk from Great-Uncle Norvie or whomever wouldn’t stay put at home or insisted on eating the local wildlife or something like that. It was good, if not particularly steady, work, and generally just enough to cover the family’s other expenses.<br/><br/>But Ginny had more siblings than just the few Hermione had noted so far. Her eldest brother, Bill, was a Curse-Breaker at Gringotts Bank, which was a remarkably similar job to their father’s, but a little less dangerous and much more prestigious. Charlie, whom Hermione had seen sitting at the High Table during meals, was the assistant professor for Care of Magical Creatures, and due to take over for Kettleburn as soon as he was old enough. And Percy, the first of the Slytherin Weasleys, had joined up with the Department of International Magical Cooperation, which had put him in a very good position considering that the DIMC had hardly even existed until last year.<br/><br/>Hermione was explaining what her own parents did—and trying, with the experience that came with telling it to many other witches and wizards over the years, to not make them sound like professional torturers—when she almost walked into the big black dog that she’d seen in the Great Hall. She stopped in her tracks. She’d never seen such a large dog before. It had a strong, heavy build like a mastiff, and was easily three feet tall at the shoulders.<br/><br/>Ginny patted her shoulder, and Hermione relaxed. “That’s Padfoot, the headmaster’s dog,” Ginny said. “He’s alright if you’re not doing anything wrong—he can be a lot of fun, actually—but he’s awfully clever and seems to always know if you’re up to something. If he sees you wandering out of bounds or after curfew, then you’re sure to get detention, even if there was nobody else around. I don’t know how the headmaster does it. Maybe you can use legilimency on a dog,” she added in a thoughtful tone.<br/><br/>Padfoot leaned over and scratched an ear with his back paw for a moment, then recentered his gaze on them.<br/><br/>“We’re not doing anything against the rules <em>now</em>, are we?” Hermione asked.<br/><br/>Ginny smiled. “Of course not. I wouldn’t get you into trouble on your second day. Maybe he thinks we’ve got something for him. <em>But we don’t</em>,” she said in a high-pitched voice, and she put her hands out toward Padfoot, palms out. “<em>No snacks!</em>”<br/><br/>Padfoot cocked his head, and dumbly sat there until Ginny walked around him. He followed after them for a few minutes, lagging behind like a tired hiker, and then they rounded a corner and Padfoot never appeared after them.<br/><br/>“He’s like that,” Ginny said, as if she were remarking on one of the great mysteries of the universe, and perhaps it was appropriate. He was a dog—how complicated could his motivations be? But he was a dog, and dogs just <em>did</em> things, sometimes. Any animal that could eat grass, vomit, and then eat its vomit was probably sure to be unfathomable in its motivations, Hermione decided. At least cats kept themselves clean.<br/><br/>As Ginny explained on their way over, Portrait Club made a point of only meeting in disused rooms. There were enough at Hogwarts to make that possible, even if they couldn’t always meet in the same room from year to year, and while this was <em>Portrait</em> Club, her brothers were all a part of it, and two in particular could sometimes make a mess. Nobody wanted to explain to a professor why the classroom floor was missing. Headmaster Riddle had a certain tolerance for troublesome ingenuity, but only insofar as it didn’t interrupt anyone’s education.<br/><br/>“It’s really all about who’s dishing out the punishment,” Ginny said. “The headmaster never removes points, but his detentions can be...scary. But then Professor Lupin <em>always</em> takes points, because he doesn’t have time to oversee detention and he doesn’t want to add to anyone’s workload if they can’t add to his, but really the worst thing is that he can just be so sad about what you did that you’re miserable. Fred and George could probably get away with doing something to his office, you know, but I think they just don’t have the heart for it.”<br/><br/>“What does Professor Lupin work on?”<br/><br/>“He teaches <em>two </em>classes. It helps that they’re both electives, and that Werewolf Studies combines all four houses, but he still spends more time teaching than anyone else, <em>and</em> he’s the Gryffindors’ Head of House, <em>and</em> he’s out of commission for a couple days every time there’s a full moon.”<br/><br/>“He teaches all seven years?” Hermione had thought it a little odd to see that two of her classes were being taught by the same professor, but at that point she had been under the impression that Hogwarts, like Beauxbatons, gave different years to different professors. Longbottom’s explanations of the Potions groups contradicted that idea, however.<br/><br/>“Yes. I don’t know how he does it.”<br/><br/>“I can’t imagine <em>why</em> he does it.”<br/><br/>“Oh, <em>that’s</em> obvious. He’s the only werewolf to get an education at Hogwarts before the laws changed. He feels responsible.”<br/><br/>The clubroom was bigger than Hermione expected, but then, the attendance was bigger than she would have imagined, too. There were at least forty students, most of them sitting on couches or laying on large pillows, all facing one of the walls, where a pair of very small curtains hung closed. Nearer the back, the couches were stacked on all sorts of things to elevate them over the people sitting in front. Ginny led her to another redhead, who was talking with a hulking boy—both of them sporting bright green ties—and two students from Durmstrang.<br/><br/>“This is my brother, Ron, and Greg. I don’t know who the others are,” Ginny said.<br/><br/>“I know who <em>one</em>—” Hermione began, before that one spoke up.<br/><br/>“Hello, <em>I </em>am Dmitry Poliakoff.” He extended a hand in greeting and nearly toppled over, but the other Durmstrang boy snatched the back of his collar before Hermione even registered Poliakoff’s imbalance. “Ah, thank you, Viktor, always such a good friend,” Poliakoff said happily and, still half-suspended by his collar, he withdrew a flask from his left sleeve and took a drink.<br/><br/>Viktor sighed. “I am Viktor Krum. Ve are being from Durmstrang.”<br/><br/>“—Not ‘being,’” Poliakoff mumbled as he settled down on a nearby couch.<br/><br/>“Ve <em>are</em> from Durmstrang,” he corrected. “I am...sorry. My English is…” He waggled his hand in the air. “Imperfect.” Krum smiled. “Ron invited us. You are from France, are you not?”<br/><br/>Hermione nodded. “I’m Hermione Granger, pleased to meet you. Ginny brought me.”<br/><br/>“Exactly. As I was saying, Viktor, Fred and George call it Weasley Club sometimes. The whole family is here, pretty much,” Ron said.<br/><br/>“Not the <em>whole</em> family,” Ginny said.<br/><br/>Ron glared at her. “You’re right, Percy’s not here anymore.”<br/><br/>“It’s funny you should bring him up, considering that he’s working for the Ministry now. But I guess anything’s okay for <em>Percy</em>.”<br/><br/>“Working for the Ministry isn’t the problem!”<br/><br/>“Not when Percy’s working there now,” Ginny said.<br/><br/>“Um, Ron,” Greg started, but Ron barreled forward, unheeding.<br/><br/>“He’s making something of himself!”<br/><br/>“So’s Bill,” Ginny replied, “and he didn’t have to join the Ministry to do it.”<br/><br/>“I just said the Ministry isn’t—At least Percy isn’t dating a Death Eater!” Ron said, close to shouting.<br/><br/>Hermione wondered what exactly he thought was wrong about that—he was the first student Hermione had met who was so open with his disapproval—but Greg caught her eye just as she was about to ask, and the anxious expression on his face made her close her mouth without uttering a sound.<br/><br/>Ginny looked about ready to raise the volume in the room herself, but then a small, terrible-smelling explosion erupted between her and Ron—and, tragically, almost directly under Hermione’s nose—and Ginny and Ron (and half the room besides) backed away as if they’d been scalded by hot water.<br/><br/>“Worry not, citizens, only a minor Dungbomb incident!” someone called. Hermione moved back as well as she could without stumbling over a cushion, pinching her nose to block the smell while offended sounds arose from the rest of the room.<br/><br/>“Here, I’ve got some Chattering Teeth,” was all Hermione heard before a disembodied pair of jaws clattered across the floor, then exploded in a cloud of blue-white sparks like astral snowflakes. The smell was gone instantly, replaced by the aroma of fresh mint, a nasty chill, and the sound of forty or so clacking jaws.<br/><br/>“Not a concern, I’ve got some Edible Fireballs, everyone sit tight and—”<br/><br/>“No!” Ginny said. “No f-f-fire! We’ll just w-w-wait for the enchant-t-t-ment-t to end, alright-t?”<br/><br/>“If our favorite sister asks, how can we deny her?”<br/><br/>Another pair of freckly redheads stepped into view, these two identical. “Ginny, are these our newest future club members?” one asked, and then, before she could respond, he extended a hand. “I’m Gred, and this is my brother Forge,” he said, while his brother introduced himself to Krum and Poliakoff but swapped their names.<br/><br/>“Wait, wait, but <em>he</em> just—”<br/><br/>“But you can call me Grederick.”<br/><br/>“I…” Hermione trailed off, too confused to know where to start.<br/><br/>“He’s George, and the other one’s Fred,” Ginny said.<br/><br/>“No he’s not. <em>I’m </em>Fred,” he protested, and Ginny sighed.<br/><br/>“That was old before I started Hogwarts. Anyway, I’m going to find Luna and be right back. Be. Nice,” Ginny said. Standing on tiptoes, Ginny still only came up to the twins’ noses, but they looked a little intimidated nevertheless.<br/><br/>George grinned. “Apologies for the freeze,” he whispered as Ginny walked away. “Sometimes there’s no other way to head off an argument, you see?” Suddenly, Hermione’s robes felt a little heavier. “Fudge Flies, for the show.”<br/><br/>“I… Okay,” Hermione said. There were some things not worth pressing. “Ginny said that you watch the portraits talk to each other,” Hermione said. Slowly, the room began to grow warm (or at least less cold) again.<br/><br/>“‘Watch them argue,’ is more like it,” George said. “Portrait Club was originally a more legitimate enterprise—they actually made portraits, if you can believe it—but by the time Fred and I got to school, the club had decided this was more fun. Even the professors agree.”<br/><br/>“No less a luminary than His Eminence the Headmaster visits on occasion,” Fred cut in. “He doesn’t actually <em>do</em> anything, funnily enough, just sits at the back and watches. With all the to-do about the Tournament, though, he’s probably going to be too busy to show up. He usually doesn’t come around this early in the year anyway. Anddd, it’s time.” Fred snapped his fingers and whirled his wand. “<em>Sonorus</em>. You’re up, George!”<br/><br/>George leaned over the tip of Fred’s wand. “Welcome, everyone, to Portrait Club! I’m the president of Portrait Club, Fred Weasley.”<br/><br/>Fred drew his wand back for a moment. “And I’m Vice-President Also Fred Weasley, but you can call me ‘Al!’”<br/><br/>George pointed to the wall behind him, where the curtains hung. “For tonight’s entertainment we have a pair of luminaries from the seventeenth century, Thaddeus Thurkell and Robert Mulciber.” With a snap of his fingers, the curtains fell to reveal a pair of portraits, one of them of a middle-aged man with silver hair, and the other of an older man with a nose like a sharp carrot. They glowered at each other and the audience in equal measure. “Not only were they fierce opponents in the days before the Statute of Secrecy, but one of them actually killed the other! Maybe you’d like to explain why, Robert?” he said, but Mulciber’s portrait gave only a tight-lipped and severe expression.<br/><br/>While George waited in vain for Robert Mulciber’s portrait to say anything, Ginny returned with a straggly-haired girl with silver eyes, and the three of them found seats just to the left of Krum and Poliakoff. Ginny handed Hermione a mug of butterbeer and a bag of roasted hazelnuts.<br/><br/>“No witty remarks for the man who killed you?” George asked. He leaned over to Fred’s wand again. “Sorry, folks, this is going to take a minute. They’ve been here before, and they’re proving a little...reluctant. But I think I can get the show started anyway, because they’ve never been here together, and… Thaddeus, I know something about Robert Mulciber that <em>you</em> don’t.”<br/><br/>Thurkell stared down at him, sneering. The sneer was at least twice as good as Mulciber’s.<br/><br/>“You don’t know this because it happened after he killed you, but eight years after your duel, Mulciber was accused of...improprieties with his house-elf.”<br/><br/>Thurkell’s eyes lit up. “Go to, sirrah?” An Amplifying Charm must have been applied to him already, because his voice was clear and audible. “You actually laid with a house-elf?” Thurkell looked at George. “Pray tell me, at least, that this mudblood did not breed and pollute the blood of our society with half-elvish, mugglish spawn.” Several club members booed at the slur.<br/><br/>Mulciber, in his own portrait, looked startled and turned. “What!? Lies! I <em>never</em>!”<br/><br/>Thurkell smirked. “Do the ears of your descendants yet droop after all these centuries?”<br/><br/>“Lies and slander! I never treated Yibble with anything but propriety! Unlike you, who could not treat your own family with the slightest measure of decency.”<br/><br/>“I did nothing but what was for the good of my sister and her children. My family’s name may have died out, but her children, and their children, to the seventh generation, lived upright lives in the pure and sacrosanct Wizarding society that I helped build for them.”<br/><br/>To her left, Poliakoff and the other boy, Viktor Something, were engaged in hushed conversation. Hermione couldn’t make out exactly what it was, but it sounded rather like Poliakoff kept saying her name. Was he asking for her butterbeer? Well, her mug <em>was</em> rather untouched, and Poliakoff had just finished off Viktor’s. She passed it to Viktor, who passed it to Poliakoff, but that didn’t really stop the chatter.<br/><br/>“It is a strange definition of honor, is it not, that includes turning on your own little ones?” Mulciber said. “And oh, yes, pardon me, I am certain that your personal liaisons were honorable as well. S’wounds, there is no doubt your wife was delighted to know that you held her dear to your breast—and every other witch in England! Indeed, you were very pure!” He made a noise of disgust.<br/><br/>“I never loved anyone but my Elizabeth, but I did what was necessary, for the sake of keeping my family’s name alive through the ages.”<br/><br/>“Including what you did to your children?”<br/><br/>“I have no children!” Thurkell’s portrait cried.<br/><br/>“You had seven, Thaddeus, and you transfigured them into hedgehogs!”<br/><br/>“Should I have dropped them in the river or left them on the side of the road? The shame of them was great, and yet I kept them and cared for them, squibbish changelings though they might have been. I bore my curse, every aspect of it, though I know not why it was laid against my house.”<br/><br/>“Such nobility there is in you. Truly, you are a modern Job. God’s teeth, do you ever listen to yourself?” Mulciber sneered and turned to the audience. “No wonder this backless adulterer wanted to cut the world in twain and separate us from the muggles. He cannot even imagine his own children as human.”<br/><br/>“Not anymore, that is!” shouted someone in the back, and so it went, their argument going round and round, with interruptions and commentary from the audience, until Thurkel crossed over to the other portrait and broke his cane against Mulciber’s head. After it was all over, Fred and George had to take the paintings off the wall and shake them beside each other until Thurkell fell through the frames and back where he belonged.<br/><br/>Poliakoff and Viktor had never really stopped talking, but now they brought Hermione into it. “Her...mee-oh—” Viktor started, and Poliakoff punched him lightly in the shoulder and whispered something. “My? My. Her-my...oh-nee?” he said and, when no second punch came, he repeated it with more confidence. “Hermione?”<br/><br/>Hermione nodded. “Yes?” she said.<br/><br/>“You are from Beauxbatons? But Ron says you are a Fourth Year. You see, at Durmstrang, only the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old students vere permitted to come. I am vondering vhy Beauxbatons is different.”<br/><br/>“I’m the youngest in the Beauxbatons delegation. I was born in Britain but my family moved to France when I was young, so I wanted to visit, and my grades were good, and...” And someone in the French government pulled strings for her. Or for someone, anyway, in a manner that was working out for her. Hermione frowned, drawing back into her mind. Why was she here? Was this really all just for some good press in <em>La Lune</em>?<br/><br/>“Vhat is the matter?” Viktor’s thick, rolling voice snapped her back to the present.<br/><br/>“Oh! And, I have a lot of classes that I’m taking by correspondence—I’m working on multiple programs, and not all of them have counterparts here—the only way I could make it work was by correspondence—I haven’t started any—I was going to study tomorrow but those are just the <em>Hogwarts classes</em>—”<br/><br/>“How many classes are you taking?”<br/><br/>“Alchemy-Arithmancy-Astronomy… <em>Eleven</em>,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>Viktor’s eyes widened. He turned back to Poliakoff and said something in Norwegian. Poliakoff snorted and said something equally foreign, and then Viktor returned his attention to Hermione. “I am not taking nearly so many classes!” he said, his voice full of awe.<br/><br/>“And I’m going to fail them all,” Hermione muttered. She could already see it in her mind’s eye: Madame Maxime—disappointed. Professor McGonagall—”I told you so.” Fleur—sad, shocked. “I’ve got to go, sorry, sorry! It was nice to meet you, euh, damn it, Viktor, Viktor...”<br/><br/>“Viktor Krum,” he said.<br/><br/>“Right, Krum, nice to meet you, sorry, goodbye!” she said. Behind her, Viktor Krum and Poliakoff were talking animatedly and quickly again, but even if she knew Norwegian, Hermione couldn’t possibly have taken the time to eavesdrop. There were still a couple hours left in the day, right? And there was always Pepper-Up Potion to keep her up into the morning. She could make up for lost time, she could still get on schedule, it was okay, everything was going to be fine—<br/><br/>Hermione would have barreled right into Fleur on her way to the carriage, if not for the other girl’s reflexes and, more importantly, greater situational awareness (which was to say, at that moment, any at all). “Oh, oh no, I’m sorry, what was I, oh, look, the carriage, I’m already—”<br/><br/>“Breathe,” Fleur said, and Hermione breathed.<br/><br/>“My <em>classes</em>,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>“You will be fine,” Fleur said, so it had to be true, so Hermione let herself relax a little. She knew the workload that Hermione had put herself under. She knew what Hermione could do. If Fleur was confident in her, then she could be confident in herself.<br/><br/>But she was <em>also</em> going to definitely get a start on her studies tonight, just as soon as she got back to her—<br/><br/>“I was looking for you,” Fleur said, interrupting her thoughts. “I am going to put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Do you want to come with me?”<br/><br/>For all that her thoughts had been a flurry a moment ago, Hermione’s mind was now at such a standstill that, by the time she had processed that, Fleur was already on the castle steps.<br/><br/>“Hermione, come along with me!” she shouted.<br/><br/>“Are you sure about this?” Hermione asked after she caught up, just outside the Great Hall.<br/><br/>“I made my decision when I applied to join the delegation. This only makes it official.”<br/><br/>“It’s been months since then. You can change your mind. Lino’s not entering. Samara’s not entering.”<br/><br/>“They were never going to enter anyway,” Fleur said as she entered the Great Hall.<br/><br/>Every step took the two of them closer to the Goblet of Fire. Every second that passed without Hermione knowing what to say, how to convince Fleur to not do this… “Idalia’s going to enter, isn’t she?” Hermione asked.<br/><br/>“I believe she already did so this afternoon.”<br/><br/>“And you’re still entering.”<br/><br/>“You doubt me,” Fleur said, and the accusation hurt, even if her tone bespoke good humor and Fleur bore a smile on her face.<br/><br/>“No. <em>Never</em>,” Hermione said, and she stopped and turned her head away. “But that’s why I’m worried.”<br/><br/>Fleur walked around so that she, or at least her feet, reentered Hermione’s downcast field of vision. “What are you worried about?<br/><br/>“<em>Haywood </em>worries me. Obviously. I don’t want you to—I don’t know how I could—I don’t know what would happen if you...”<br/><br/>“So you would sacrifice Idalia for me, and send her to face that dreadful Hufflepuff girl?”<br/><br/>“Let <em>Lino </em>worry about Idalia, if he loves her!”<br/><br/>“I’m not sure that I could beat Haywood in a duel,” Fleur admitted. “Of all of us, Idalia has the best chance of achieving it—and even so, I would worry until the very end.”<br/><br/>“Then you won’t add your name?” Hermione said, trying to keep her voice steady and free from desperation.<br/><br/>Fleur shook her head. “The Tournament will not be just a duel. I don’t know what tasks it will involve, but never in five centuries has it been just a duel. If I’m wrong, tell me,” Fleur demanded, and when Hermione, who knew it was true, said nothing, she continued. “Idalia is a sword with a single edge, and she is sharp enough to slice through a moonbeam, but cutting is all she will ever do. If Idalia is our champion, then she can win the duel—if there is even a duel—but she will lose the Tournament.”<br/><br/>“Then she loses.”<br/><br/>Fleur put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder. It felt warm, but that only served to make Hermione realize how cold she really felt, in the rest of her body and in her heart. “If you weren’t my friend, would you care so much about my entry into the Tournament?”<br/><br/>“No, but—”<br/><br/>“And <em>as</em> my friend, could you live with yourself if I became something small and weak?”<br/><br/>“You’d never be,” Hermione protested. “You couldn’t. But if you got <em>hurt</em> I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. Fleur, there are more important things than—”<br/><br/>“There is nothing more important than being who you are,” Fleur said firmly, “because you cannot be anything else. If you tried, you would become what you were trying to be, and you wouldn’t be pretending anymore. Do you want to ask me to be something smaller than what I could have been?” She extended a slip of parchment. Hermione didn’t need to read it to know what it said.<br/><br/>With great effort, as if she had to rip the word from her chest, Hermione finally said, “No.”<br/><br/>Fleur smiled and dropped the parchment into the Goblet of Fire. The flames leapt as though she’d spilled a handful of coal dust into their belly. In an instant, the parchment was gone, and the fire turned ghostly white for a passing instant. “It is done,” Fleur said, and she squeezed Hermione’s shoulder. “Everything will be fine, you will see.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Craftsman of Destruction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.</p>
  <p>Criss Jami</p>
</blockquote><p>When Hermione awoke the next Sunday morning, she did feel a little better. In some ways, the situation had improved, insofar as she was hopeless, which made it possible to dispense with the taxing work of remaining hopeful. More than that, however, Hermione was determined to have the same faith in Fleur which Fleur had in her own self—and to be there for Fleur, if she were chosen. If it were necessary, Hermione was willing—more than willing—to research and study and do whatever was required for her.<br/><br/>In some ways, Hermione had failed last night, but she ought to have known better than to fantasize that Fleur wouldn’t enter the Tournament. She went to breakfast with a resigned, fatalistic peace. She felt her appetite again, noticing its return more than she had its departure. Hermione even felt adventurous, so she reached for some kind of brown cheese on brown bread. It was unlike any cheese she’d had before: creamy, salty, savory, with a strong and unexpected suggestion of caramel. She took a handful of odd berries as well, red-orange near-raspberries that were tart and floral.<br/><br/>“Good morning,” Fleur said brightly. “Enjoying the… What is that, exactly?”<br/><br/>“I have no idea,” Hermione replied. “I think it’s from Durmstrang.”<br/><br/>Hermione wanted to speak with Idalia, but she hadn’t been showing up to breakfast for the past couple days. While a bit of Hermione was jealous that the older student could skip eating and not be hounded, there was another part which was pleased that Fleur cared. Hermione spent the whole period at breakfast, making up for lost time and (this was just as important) proving to Fleur that she was doing just fine now and that there wasn’t any need for worry on her behalf. Either because it had become her habit, or because she was keeping an eye on Hermione, Fleur remained even as other Beauxbatons students removed themselves. It was a bearable situation.<br/><br/>The Goblet of Fire remained at the edge of her awareness, but Hermione was able to carry on almost as if it wasn’t there. She plied Malfoy with more questions about his family, and learned that his cousin would be visiting Hogwarts soon to help set up for the Tournament. With Ginny and Luna (the latter visiting from the Ravenclaws’ table), she spoke about Portrait Club, which had been amusing, but about which Hermione had some reservations. Portraits weren’t human, but they were still people, weren’t they? Hermione carefully avoided the subject of Ginny’s brothers—she might not be able to dance around a topic, but she could at least stay on the far side of the room and refuse to make eye contact with it.<br/><br/>When the dishes Vanished themselves and the tables were all bare, Hermione excused herself from all present company, Fleur included, and went in search of Idalia. It wasn’t difficult to find her—Idalia was practicing on the shores of the Black Lake again. Or rather, she <em>had </em>been, for now Idalia was reclining back on a sloppily-conjured armchair while Lino applied Bruise-Removal Paste to one of her eyes, which was turning as black as her hair. It looked sensitive, but Idalia was reading as if it were just a bit of makeup.<br/><br/>“Idalia?” said Hermione, and she waited for Idalia to look up from <em>The Young Witch’s Guide to Pugilism</em> before she resumed. “Fleur put her name in the Goblet of Fire last night.”<br/><br/>“Yes! She told me she would do so. But something tells me you’re less than happy about that.” Idalia smiled knowingly.<br/><br/>Hermione shrugged. “It is what it is, and I can’t do anything about it, except, euh, never mind...”<br/><br/>“Except hope that the Goblet chooses me instead,” Idalia said. Lino stiffened momentarily, but Idalia didn’t seem put out by the idea.<br/><br/>“Yes,” Hermione said, a little embarrassed by the admission anyway. “That isn’t why I came to talk with you, though. I wanted to ask if you’d help me… You’ve been training with her. I know that you’ve been doing that to prepare for the Tournament, but will you keep that up if she’s chosen, even if you aren’t the Beauxbatons champion?”<br/><br/>Idalia grinned. “Of course.”<br/><br/>“Thank you, Idalia,” Hermione said, and then, catching Lino’s eye, and knowing what he must have been thinking, Hermione added, “If you’re selected, let me know if you need anything. Whatever you need, I’ll help you find it.”<br/><br/>“I’ll hold you to that,” Idalia said. Her tone was light, but Lino’s expression echoed the remark with all the seriousness that Idalia’s response had lacked.<br/><br/>Vicente was no more difficult to locate. It was a pleasant Sunday morning, and he had stayed up late playing Scrabble, so it was only to be expected that Vicente had scarcely roused himself from bed by the time Hermione knocked on his door.<br/><br/>“Vicente.”<br/><br/>He stifled a yawn. “Hermione.”<br/><br/>“I wanted to speak with you about potions,” she started. “You’re training to be a Healer and I know that you don’t like Dark magic but they teach that here, and they teach it at Durmstrang, and you still might know what they’re taught, because, because that’s Healing, isn’t it? And...I know it’s a tall order and it’s a lot to ask for, but I was wondering if you could teach me everything that you know.”<br/><br/>Vicente blinked. “Everything.”<br/><br/>“Or most of everything. Anything might be relevant. To start out with, what potions could somebody use ahead of time—before, say, a match in a tournament—in order to counteract the effects of Dark magic or other curses, especially the kind of magic that might be within the reach of students, and would these potions constitute cheating, and if they did, is there any way to disguise their use?”<br/><br/>“Right. Give me ten minutes,” he said, and the door shut.<br/><br/>True to his word, Vicente returned in exactly ten minutes. He was better-dressed but still tired, so they shared (or rather, Hermione supplied and Vicente drank) coffee as they talked. There were, of course, many charms, and other kinds of spells besides, that could be cast into, or otherwise used to enchant, an object. The Extension Charm was one of the most common examples, but the Extinguishing Charm could, cast one way or another, make a handkerchief good for putting out fires or keep it from burning. Gloves could break fingers if they had been bewitched with the Finger-Snapping Hex, and the most common variety of Invisibility Cloak was created by way of the Disillusionment Charm.<br/><br/>It might be cheating to rely on such measures in the Tournament. Vicente wasn’t sure, but Hermione could find out for him. That hardly mattered, though—Vicente stated more than once that he wouldn’t mind discussing purely hypothetical scenarios even if they <em>were</em> banned. The Triwizard Tournament always involved a certain amount of cheating in the past anyway, and besides, there was the Haywood girl.<br/><br/>All that business took Hermione clear to lunch. Again, she ate more heartily before, and even felt good enough to help herself to some jellied eel. The die had been cast, as Caesar once said, and Hermione could only play the hand which she had been dealt—but she was determined to play it well. Resignation was not defeat. It could be the first step on the road to success.<br/><br/>Heartened by her progress that day, Hermione refocused on her studies. The classes she was taking only barely outnumbered the courses she had to keep up by correspondence, and Hermione had not, for all that she’d seen, given up her intention to achieve every last S.I. it was possible for her to take. If she had to help Fleur as the school’s champion, then that only heightened Hermione’s need to be on top of her schoolwork.<br/><br/>Her Greek was more than passing, and Hermione spent most of the afternoon getting ahead in her Greek Reader. By dinner, Hermione had completed the hymns of Orpheus, who had practiced an odd, extinct magical tradition in which incantations were sung more than spoken, and when she returned, she was ready to work on the <em>Purifications</em> of Empedocles. Later, there would be essays on both sets of verse, independently and in comparison to each other and to the poetry of Circe.<br/><br/>When Hermione went to bed that night, she was content, and her dreams did nothing to dispel that feeling by Monday morning. Werewolf Studies was her only class of the day, but it was early and it was long—a two-hour, or “double,” period, like Potions had been—so Hermione ate breakfast quickly and went on her way.<br/><br/>Hermione had gotten the impression, from Potions and her conversations with other students, that each class period was composed of students from just two houses, but members of all four houses seemed to be present when she reached the classroom. There were surely some werewolves here, and Hermione looked about, ready to pick them out by their scars and malaise, but every student was as lively, hale, and unblemished as the next. It was a strong contrast with Professor Lupin’s marred and haggard features. When he spoke, his voice carried with it the steadfastness of the perpetually-exhausted, and his eyes, though tired, were nevertheless alert and bright.<br/><br/>“Today’s lesson will be an eminently practical one,” he began. “As those of you who have experienced it will already know, the transformation will probably leave you feeling like a bit of old ham that’s been in somebody’s shoe for three days. And that’s just if you go unmedicated,” he noted. “When you’re on the Wolfsbane, you’ll feel ten times worse, because…”<br/><br/>“Wolfsbane is a poison,” droned every student in the room, except for Hermione.<br/><br/>When Professor Lupin smiled, he looked ten years younger. “Exactly so. At fourteen, you’re getting close enough to being old enough that you might be expected to fend for yourselves. Your family are going to feel just as bad as you, or even worse if they haven’t gotten used to the transformation yet, so you can’t count on somebody else being around to hold your head over the water, as it were—though for those of you who’re just taking this class because a friend of yours is a werewolf, I appreciate that more than you can know. I want everyone here to be able to fend for themselves, but even more, I don’t want anyone to <em>need </em>to, and that isn’t possible without you. Now, then, onto recuperation. Pay attention, please—most of what we study until Christmas will tie back to this in some way.”<br/><br/>Professor Lupin made a few motions with his wand, and a boar appeared on his desk, belly-up and legs stiff. It was quite massive and, thankfully, quite dead. “Food will help you to recover from the aftereffects of the Wolfsbane and the transformation. What will help most of all, because the curse hungers for it, is human flesh, but the next best thing,” he said, speaking over the scandalized murmurs as if they weren’t there, “is the flesh of pigs, who are, in many respects, more like humans than not.”<br/><br/>If Hermione had ever been one to slouch in class, she would have been sitting at attention now. She was already aware of the equivalences between humans and pigs (it was not uncommon for magical researchers to experiment on pigs before advancing to humans), but that particular connection was one she hadn’t drawn before.<br/><br/>“This is just a conjured boar,” Professor Lupin continued, “so it isn’t food, and if you try to eat it then you’ll do nothing but upset your stomach, but everything I show you will still apply. Just make sure that you make arrangements to have a pig <em>before</em> you feel like you’ve been left as bludger-bait for the past eight hours. As I said, food will help, but that isn’t enough on its own. Your stomach may <em>feel </em>bottomless, especially if you’re on the tail end of the transformation, but it really isn’t, which means that you should go for quality over quantity.”<br/><br/>With a twist of his wand, Professor Lupin lifted the pig into the air and split apart its abdomen. Hermione tried not to retch at the smell as its guts fell out onto his desk. Professor Lupin continued his lecture, as though a demonstration in field-dressing large animals was nothing unusual. “Begin at the rear, like so, then move up. If you can suspend the pig with a Levitation Charm, then do so, and gravity will do a lot of the work for you, but just leave it on the ground if you think you might launch it into the air instead. Now, you’re going to want to split the pelvic bone—that’s this right here—and be careful to not pierce the intestines. If you do, apply a Sterilizing Charm. Your ordinary Scouring Charm may not suffice, and might even impact the quality of the meat. It’ll mostly just impact the flavor, but that’s no reason to do this wrong. You may need something stronger than the Cutting Charm in order to get through the bones. If you can use it with precision, then the Woodsman’s Curse is best. If you cannot, then I recommend Sawyer Pitman’s Ripping Charm. We will cover both of these, probably in November.”<br/><br/>Hermione raised her hand.<br/><br/>“Ms... <em>Granger</em>, is that right?”<br/><br/>“Yes, sir,” Hermione said, and then, when Professor Lupin indicated for her to continue, she asked, “Isn’t the Ripping Charm rather Dark magic?”<br/><br/>There were a few sounds of disbelief from the other students, but Lupin didn’t seem perturbed. “I imagine that you’re from Beauxbatons rather than Durmstrang,” he said, but it didn’t sound like he was mocking her for it. “Anyway, the Ministry of Magic removed it from the Catalog of Restricted Charms some time ago. While the Ripping Charm will inflict grievous damage on a living target, there’s no risk that the caster will lose control of the spell or be harmed by its repeated use, and incurability is no longer grounds for classification under the Dark Arts, not in Britain.”<br/><br/>Hermione nodded silently, and Professor Lupin resumed his lesson. “Once you have disposed of the rib cage, you should be able to find the heart. After you have removed it, you should look for the stomach—this organ,” Lupin said, pointing at a bulgy question mark that had been turned on its side. “If the pig is on its back and its belly faces yours, then the stomach will be on the right, like so. Remove the stomach and set it beside the heart. Food doesn’t pass through the stomach immediately, and it’s good for some undigested plant matter to be left over, so, if you’re preparing this for someone else, you should feed the pig two or three hours before slaughtering. Later this month, we’ll talk about what you should feed it, if you have options.”<br/><br/>The smell was wretched and the sight was awful, and it was growing worse as the class wore on. Hermione didn’t eat much meat—it wasn’t always available at Beauxbatons, not like fish, and beef and chicken just sat too heavily for her taste—and she’d never before been presented with the hot carcass as she was now. More than that, however, it was impossible to see it, guts strewn, and hear the professor suggest Dark magic for such a utilitarian purpose, and not think again of Haywood. Had she learned the Ripping Charm, and if she had, would she use it? It couldn’t possibly be permitted by the rules, but Hermione was unsatisfied by that fact when Riddle and the Ministry were obviously willing to rewrite the rules.<br/><br/>“Above the stomach, right here, is the liver, which you should always make sure to include. Next, look for a pair of organs, one on each side, that look a little like beans.” Professor Lupin held one up. “This is a kidney. It will taste very bad, especially raw, but just one will assist your recovery almost as well as the liver.” With a slash of his wand, Professor Lupin decapitated the pig, then Vanished the body. “The last two organs that you should look for are the brain and eyes. Don’t worry about cooking any of this. If the pig is freshly slaughtered then everything will still be warm, and raw meat is more potent than cooked. At this stage, anyway. If you’ve eaten everything that I described, then you might remember that you’re still very tired. Cast a Cooling Charm, if you can manage it, then let yourself sleep a little and prepare the rest of the pig when you wake up.”<br/><br/>Hermione raised her hand again. At least there were questions with which to distract herself. “Won’t raw pork make you sick?”<br/><br/>Professor Lupin shrugged. “Werewolves benefit very little from the curse. We are not stronger, we do not have a keener sense of smell, and we certainly can’t control when or how we transform, but werewolves have, traditionally, been on the fringes of society, and for hundreds or even thousands of years, and in all that time the curse has never died out. There are places in the world, even today, where some werewolves are alive only because they can subsist on garbage that isn’t fit for dogs.” Professor Lupin’s expression was grave. “But having a cast-iron stomach doesn’t mean that you’ll feel good when you eat it, and you may have a tough time while your body is still processing the Wolfsbane. If you’re feeling really poorly and you can’t keep down solid foods, then you should grind the organs to liquid. You won’t have any problems knowing when it’s you, but if you’re doing this for someone else, then pay attention to the skin: paleness or greenness, especially in the face, lips, and fingers, is an indication of nausea. Be aware of this, and don’t make your friend sick.”<br/><br/>After class let out, Hermione returned to her homework (in the open air, despite the chill). This year, even more than others, she needed to get ahead so that she had room to slip without falling behind. Professor Feo had, against McGonagall’s advice, provided study materials so that Hermione could pursue Alchemy until she returned from Hogwarts. It wouldn’t do to disappoint him and there might be some interesting correspondences with Transfiguration, so, by the time evening rolled around, she was already working on her first essay of the school year.<br/><br/>Tuesdays were busy, but comfortably so: History and Transfiguration before lunch, and then Ghoul Studies, again with Professor Lupin. It would only be three hours, or four with lunch, and still leave most of the afternoon for homework and studying.<br/><br/>History of Magic was taught by Professor Bonnie Trocar, the owl-eyed vampire who ate so carefully and silently at the High Table every breakfast and dinner, but had, at least since this year began, made herself scarce during lunch. Her dress was for the most part utilitarian, rather keeping in the style that Headmaster Riddle seemed to prefer, but around her shoulders was an ornate shawl, stitched with some material that was darker than midnight and embellished with the most delicate gold threads.<br/><br/>While the students filed in and took their seats, Professor Trocar stood, motionless except for the twitching of her pupils and the occasional blink of her eyelids. Then, without warning, she pressed her wand against the side of her neck, just before her chin, and began to speak. Her voice was very soft, but it carried as though the professor were speaking directly into Hermione’s ears.<br/><br/>“You know the nature of the British project, but only in the broadest way. You do not understand it. You cannot remember what the world was like.” Professor Trocar closed her eyes for the slightest moment. “I am here to remember for you,” she said. Her jaws moved only a little, and so her pronunciation was strange, but still understandable.<br/><br/>“There are many horrors which the muggles have conspired to invent, which they can barely contain and which sicken even their own people. All of Britain’s people, magical and muggle, are safer from these things than they were twenty years ago, and as far away as China there are those who would, but for the interference of the ICW, follow our example.”<br/><br/>Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her seat, but she was able to keep a lock on her tongue.<br/><br/>“Likewise, we are not alone in knowing that it is wise to separate ourselves from those who do not know, and cannot apprehend, magic. It should be appreciated that we are all united in the understanding that muggles should be ignorant of our world. The ICW exists for that very purpose, and it was to protect that mission that the world united against Grindelwald. But, of course, there are those who have seen fit to go further. In the Atlantic Commonweal, Emily Rappaport codified a separation similar to that which exists in Britain, except that muggle-borns were abandoned to the depredations of their families—”<br/><br/>Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Professor Trocar grinned broadly, revealing a mouth full of ghastly teeth, and Hermione quailed, but she didn’t put her hand down.<br/><br/>“Yes,” Professor Trocar uttered.<br/><br/>“My parents never did anything to hurt me. They’re muggles, but they never would have—”<br/><br/>“You’re a bright girl,” Professor Trocar interrupted. “Surely, you are bright enough to not generalize from a single case, or assume that because things were one way for you, that they would be that way for all people.”<br/><br/>“It isn’t just me. I have muggle-born friends, too.”<br/><br/>“Then go to any archive and request their records, and see what muggles have wrought on muggle-borns. Compare the attendance rolls of any school to their books of acceptance, and see how many names are missing from the rolls, or disappear after one or two years. Then check, if you are willing, which names were born to muggle families.” Professor Trocar closed her eyes for a moment. “I will not require an apology, either now or when you have seen it for yourself, but I will ask that you be more circumspect in my classes.” She flashed another toothy smile.<br/><br/>This time, Hermione backed down.<br/><br/>“The simple fact is that muggle-borns are, on the whole, not safe among muggles,” Trocar said, now addressing the whole class again. “When the muggles hunted wizards and burned witches, it was often the little children who suffered. A competent witch could cast the Flame-Freezing Charm or keep a bit of Floo powder in her pocket to transform the pyre to a portal, but not so a muggle-born whose education was incomplete, or perhaps had not even progressed beyond the stage of accidental magic. And today the children still suffer. I would describe for you ‘exorcisms’ and ‘shock therapy,’ but…” Trocar paused, and the sharpness of her features softened. “You are not old enough.”<br/><br/>Hermione remained quiet for the rest of the class, and couldn’t depart for Transfiguration quickly enough when it ended. Here, at least, was a class which she could expect to be normal, but there was a surprise there as well, because she recognized (in some ways) the Transfiguration Professor, and yet he wasn’t who she’d expected. Hermione had seen him before, sitting at the High Table at every meal, just a few seats from Riddle, but Transfiguration was being taught by Bartemius Crouch, or so the syllabus said.<br/><br/>There was, now that Hermione thought about it, a certain resemblance to the man she’d seen in Professor McGonagall’s photos, but he was much too young to be that man. And yet the other students had definitely referred to him as “Professor Crouch.” Hermione resolved to write a letter to McGonagall and ask—it would be crass to ask the professor himself whether it was his brother or his cousin whose death McGonagall had relayed to her.<br/><br/>At least there were no additional surprises, and Hermione was able to move along to lunch and then to Ghoul Studies without further incident. That, too, was a peaceful class. Contrary to what Hermione had thought when she first registered for it, “ghoul” encompassed a broad category at Hogwarts, and referred to more than just the stunted omnivores that could be found in attics and which the French called <em>goules</em>. In English, the word had gained currency as a reference for any kind of creature which was connected to corpses, displacing the older and broader <em>feendlich</em>, which had applied even to inferi.<br/><br/>It made sense, then, that her syllabus had mentioned earth-hounds and bal-bals, just as it covered chameleon ghouls. Before the 18th century, when vampires began to immigrate to Western Europe, they had been little-known in Britain and were at that time considered a kind of ghoul. Even now the association remained strong enough that at least half the curriculum could really have been better-named Vampire Studies.<br/><br/>There was, thankfully, no gore on the desks this time when Lupin taught.<br/><br/>But Ghoul Studies had been only a reprieve from the day’s allotment of curiosities. Upon her return to the carriage, Hermione was greeted by Samara. “The library is occupied,” Samara wrote on her slate. She wiped it clean, then added, “The headmistress is talking with somebody in government.”<br/><br/>“What’s the Ministry want with her?” Hermione asked.<br/><br/>Samara shook her head and tapped her wand against the slate. “French, not British.” She didn’t know who the official was—Samara was from Hispanapule, not France—and there was nothing that Hermione could do—certainly not interrupt a meeting—so Hermione departed for her room. After Madame Maxime exited the library, however, she sent for Hermione, who needed to be drawn out of her studies to speak with their guest. The headmistress sounded displeased by it, but if that were so, there didn’t seem to be much she could do about things.<br/><br/>The man’s face was weathered, and his hair was cut very short. He was tall, or so Hermione was given to understand, but he sat with hunched shoulders and a slouched back, so he appeared anything but. She had never seen him in person, but he had been present in many photographs, especially in <em>La Lune</em>, especially as of late, and so Hermione could not fail to recognize the man who had made it possible for her to come to Hogwarts.<br/><br/>“Good afternoon, Mister Octobre. I didn’t expect you would be visiting us.”<br/><br/>Octobre nodded. The gesture was perfunctory, almost cold. “I will be here for most of the year. I’m going to be one of the judges at the Tournament. Oh, they haven’t explained the details to you, have they?” He smiled. “Well, never mind that. I don’t want to spoil anything, and anyway, that isn’t why I’m visiting you tonight.”<br/><br/>“Then what are you here for?” Hermione wasn’t stupid, no matter what Octobre might be thinking with his friendly act. He’d done something for her, and gone to great and unexpected lengths to make sure of it, and if he was here then that could only mean that the piper was calling his due.<br/><br/>Octobre drew his wand. It was a stubby baton, no longer than his hand from wrist to the end of his middle finger, and carved from creamy-yellow poplar. With a swish and a murmured incantation, his briefcase opened and a pair of mugs rolled out, clink-clinking whenever their handles knocked against the desk. “May I confide something in you, Hermione?”<br/><br/>She nodded, unsure where this was going but willing to indulge the eccentricities of an older wizard if it would, eventually, get them to the point.<br/><br/>“I pride myself on my French spirit, but, to my shame, I have never developed a taste for coffee. In truth, I can hardly abide anything stronger than water. I have, however, a special appreciation for infusions.” Octobre gestured to his open briefcase, which held a glass jar of pale green stems, hollow like straws. “I particularly like lemongrass. For lifting spirits and alleviating stress, I find that it works better than most potions.” He smiled. “You have the eyes of someone who is stressed.”<br/><br/>“Excuse me?” she asked, but Octobre was not immediately forthcoming with a reply. With the deft fingerwork of a stage magician, Octobre dropped lemongrass into a pair of mugs, then tapped the rims with his wand and brought their water to a boil. The stems stirred themselves and the water turned a sort of yellow green.<br/><br/>Octobre passed one mug to her. He brought the other to his mouth and drank deeply, using the lemongrass stem like a straw, but his eyes never left her, and the weight of his gaze was heavy, lingering in her awareness even when she looked down into her own mug. The silence between them was nearly palpable, and grew thicker, even suffocating, as the seconds drew on.<br/><br/>Finally, Hermione drank, and as it flowed down her throat, she felt cleansed.<br/><br/>“There is a place where there are no secrets, except for those which we keep from ourselves,” Octobre murmured. “That place can be anywhere.”<br/><br/>“I don’t quite understand,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>Octobre replied, and the answer was satisfactory in the moment, but when she thought about it in the hours to follow, its substance would be somehow absent and even the absence would slip away from her awareness, like it had been polished smooth and coated with grease.<br/><br/>“If that’s so, then you’ll tell me why you forced Madame Maxime to let me come to Hogwarts.”<br/><br/>“Soon enough. Before we part ways,” Octobre promised. “How are you settling in?”<br/><br/>Later, Hermione would recognize—fleetingly, struggling to remember even the remembrance—that something had happened here. Much later, she would realize it had not happened yet, not at this juncture in their conversation.<br/><br/>“I’m performing well in my classes. I feel like I’m staying on top of my schoolwork, and I think I’m making friends. It’s cold, and there are… It isn’t perfect, but I don’t regret coming.”<br/><br/>“And how do you find Hogwarts?” Octobre lifted his mug again, and Hermione realized, or remembered, or <em>would</em> remember, that her own had already been refilled (once? twice?) before.<br/><br/>“It’s like nothing I imagined,” she said diplomatically. For good and ill, that was true.<br/><br/>“It is a more forward-thinking place, don’t you think? You could study whatever you wanted here, and none of your friends would face prejudice. I’m sure that Britain feels more, how do they say it, <em>representative</em> than France, as well.”<br/><br/>“There’s so much that’s praiseworthy, but… I can’t help but remember that, if it weren’t for a fluke of fate, my parents would think I was dead, or maybe even forget I had ever existed, and I would have been raised to never realize how horrifying that would be.”<br/><br/>“The most necessary potions are often the foulest.”<br/><br/>Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Are you justifying what Riddle’s done?”<br/><br/>“Were I perfect, I would be just a vessel into which France may pour its spirit. I would to God that I be perfect now, and say nothing more than, nor fail to say, what is needful.”<br/><br/>Hermione looked down into her mug, half-full with lemongrass infusion. It would be hard to remember later how much she had drunk, but at that time her stomach was full, nearly fit to burst. “I want to make things better. I’m studying law and relations and all the rest of it because, because France isn’t perfect, the world isn’t perfect, and I’m seeing now, in Britain, things that could be done that I’d considered, but I’ve also seen things that I <em>can’t</em> consider.”<br/><br/>Octobre cleansed his mug with a jab of his wand. “My reach is long and my grasp is strong. You saw, when I threatened Beauxbatons, that I have the ear of His Most Christian Majesty. I can do much for you. I can protect your friends, or set them in high places, and I can speak in favor of the policies which you desire. Write your proposals, your fondest wishes, and I, the Keeper of the Seals of France, will set them with my own seals. But your heart must be true.”<br/><br/>He might have said something more, and Hermione might have said something in reply, but she wouldn’t remember later whether it was so. Even the question of it would be hard to summon up in her mind.<br/><br/>“I’m British, and I won’t stop being British,” Hermione said, “but I’m French, too.”<br/><br/>That must have satisfied Octobre. “Has Riddle approached you?”<br/><br/>“I don’t know if he’s even aware that I exist.”<br/><br/>“He is aware,” Octobre said. “As you said, you are British.”<br/><br/>“Why did you help me come to Hogwarts?” she asked again.<br/><br/>When Hermione thought back to their conversation, this is what she would remember Octobre saying next. “It is precisely because you have been faithful to France, and yet long for Britain, that I ensured you could come here. You are in a unique position, a place of influence comparable in ways to my own, where you could be a bridge between our nations.” And though it was an unsatisfactory answer, and rang false, Hermione would recall feeling that Octobre’s explanation had been more than adequate.<br/><br/>“And if I do that—”<br/><br/>“Then all my powers will be at your disposal, and nothing which I can accomplish will be denied you.”<br/><br/>“I thought you only acted as France required.”<br/><br/>“To ensure that you do this thing, there is no payment which would not be in the service of France.”<br/><br/>“Then I’ll do it,” Hermione said, although, no matter how many times she reflected on her words in the future, she could not muster the same strength of conviction which she could remember feeling in that moment.<br/><br/>Their conversation ended abruptly, like a fingersnap, and Octobre was at the door. “This was good. Let’s talk again sometime,” he said, and then Hermione was alone in the library.<br/><br/>That night, while she put her supplies away, a scrap of parchment fell out of one of her books. The words were squished and sloppy, like its author hadn’t been paying attention, but the handwriting was unmistakably Hermione’s own.<br/><br/><em>Protect your mind. Burn after reading.</em><br/><br/>There was nothing on the other side.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I don't recall where I came across the idea that werewolves can eat pretty much anything, but I like it a lot. Harry Potter's werewolves are pretty unusual in not having any kind of special powers, and a lot of HP fanfics with werewolves will give them powers anyway. For that reason, I adore the idea that werewolves do have power-ups, but very shitty power-ups that honestly just kind of make things worse. "Yes, you can eat moldy bread and rotting meat, and not die. No, it doesn't taste any better, but you'd better try to keep it down anyway, because if you throw up you'll still be hungry, and putrid garbage isn't improved by the taste of your own vomit." </p><p>The emphasis that "wolfsbane is a poison" comes from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/536450/chapters/952621">The Never-Ending Road</a> by laventadorn.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Still Shining</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Even in the midst of the storm the sun is still shining.</p>
  <p>Dayna Lovely</p>
</blockquote><p>What had Octobre done to her? For all that the details of their meeting were slippery and Hermione could recollect some parts of it only through a fog, something was obviously wrong. The very fact that she didn’t <em>know</em> what was wrong was ominous in itself.<br/><br/>The worst thing was perhaps the fact that Hermione had written out instructions to herself, and then forgotten—or rather, been forced to forget—that she had done so.<br/><br/>The first thing Hermione thought to do was tell Madame Maxime. It was the obvious course of action, and the headmistress would surely consider the situation to be worth bringing to her attention, but Hermione couldn’t do it. The Sword of Damocles still hung over Beauxbatons, ready to descend and sever the school’s right to its own grounds if Octobre willed it, and if his interest in Hermione’s presence in Britain hadn’t been clear already, it surely was now.<br/><br/>Almost as quickly, Hermione dismissed the idea of telling Fleur. She would surely tell Madame Maxime and then Octobre’s sword would swing down all the same, delayed only by a few minutes. It was hard to fault Fleur for that (Hermione would surely do the same for her, if their positions were reversed) but good intentions couldn’t make up for bad consequences. Fleur might even (there was no doubt that she would) position herself between Hermione and Octobre, and that, too, Hermione couldn’t allow.<br/><br/>But if Hermione was isolated, that didn’t mean that she was totally adrift: she could rely, at least, on the support of her past self, who had somehow snatched the opportunity to send warning advice to her. They taught mental magic at Hogwarts, which meant that the library had to have useful references. If Hermione couldn’t talk to somebody else, then she could still teach herself.<br/><br/>Hermione would have started that minute, but the Library was closed. She did homework instead, making notes on the <em>Purifications </em>of Empedocles from her Greek Reader and leveraging the mighty arm of schoolwork to calm her racing mind. That discomfort was still there, a distracting worm that gnawed at her, but one line became two, and two became four, and eventually she fell asleep.<br/><br/>Hermione awoke a few hours later with an ache in her back and a sore neck. The morning light shone through her window, casting out the glimmers of a few half-remembered nightmares, and her worries, she wanted to believe, were going away with them. It was (going to be) okay. She had managed to send a warning to herself, and Octobre hadn’t noticed. Whatever it was that he was trying to do, whatever his intentions were, he wasn’t in control like he thought he was. Hermione, or some version of her, had managed to beat him once, and proven that there was a solution to this problem.<br/><br/>Hermione hardly took breakfast that morning, but she could honestly tell Fleur that she was only distracted by the prospect of studying, and that was enough to put Fleur’s worries <em>mostly </em>to rest. That, and eating a little more. It was harder to do that than Hermione would have liked to admit, but the water wasn’t tea, the pancakes didn’t smell like fire and weren’t cooked flesh, and Hermione could tell herself—almost believe—that there was nothing to worry about.<br/><br/>There wasn’t much that Hermione knew in detail about mental magic, but she knew that eye contact was important, and she wasn’t about to let the headmaster into her memories. She didn’t need to think about averting her eyes from Riddle, though. The Goblet of Fire still stood behind him, on the far end of the Great Hall, and that was reason enough to look anywhere else.<br/><br/>After breakfast, Hermione went straight for the library, and there found a measure of peace. Whether they belonged to Beauxbatons or to Hogwarts, books were books. Hermione didn’t find <em>anything</em> at first, but an older student noticed her frustration and advised her to reference Titan Wisby’s Tome of Terms. As it turned out, there was no one bookshelf for Occlumency, or even a single term for it. There was mnenomancy<b>, </b>and phrenic vigilance, and a dozen other words. “Mental magic,” according to Wisby, was an artificial categorization, and the pedestaled directories of the Hogwarts Library still filed each book according to which of a dozen so-called sub-disciplines it seemed closest to.<br/><br/>Wordlessly, Madam Pince stamped out permissions and due dates for <em>Fogging the Mind</em>, the awkwardly-named <em>Protection Charm Your Mind</em>, and a few others that looked like introductory texts. There were many more in the vein of <em>The Tome of Transcendent Thought </em>and <em>Threshold to Transcendent Thought,</em> more advanced texts with a specialized vocabulary all their own. Even <em>Ascent to the Threshold of Transcendent Thought,</em> an introduction to an introduction, had so much jargon in it that Hermione spent more time looking up terms than actually making headway in the text.<br/><br/>A mild interrogation from Fleur near the end of lunch was inevitable, as was Hermione’s reply that she was “studying.”<br/><br/>Fleur smirked. “You should study outside. It is not that cold today. Come and enjoy the light of day.”<br/><br/>“And put my books on the ground?”<br/><br/>“Are you a witch or not? Conjure a desk for yourself. And if you ever lift your head, you can judge my dueling against Idalia’s. We are going to practice until my next class.”<br/><br/>Oh, that rather changed things. It would be good to...be reminded that Fleur could take care of herself. “I guess I could conjure a desk.” And an armchair. Or, no, wait—it would be simpler, wouldn’t it, to shrink one of the carriage’s chairs.<br/><br/>While Hermione prepared her study spot, Fleur and Idalia warmed up and Lino conjured an oversized cushion. Fleur was right. It <em>was </em>nice out. What Fleur hadn’t mentioned was that it was busy, too. As Hermione watched, she could also see more than a dozen witches and wizards trooping up and down the school grounds, dressed in official-looking robes. Most bore a styled “M” resting on a set of balance scales, but she could see few other symbols in there as well, including the fleur-de-lis of Wizarding France. From one of their wands, golden light streamed forth and settled smoothly on the ground, and as the light clumped and piled up like sand, another knelt down and scooped up a handful of soil. Elsewhere, two witches chatted and (if Hermione correctly understood) paced off a perimeter. Every few steps, one of them—always the same witch—stopped and spun on one foot.<br/><br/>Between Fleur and Idalia’s second and third matches, they sat on the grass beside Lino and chatted about a troll wrestling ring in Luxembourg which one of the Durmstrang students had told Idalia about. While Idalia described one of the more gruesome incidents—both the ring and most of its non-troll competitors had been remarkably short-lived—Viktor and his friend came over. They, being less familiar with her habits, couldn’t tell the difference between an unstudious Hermione and one who was staring into the distance as she wrestled with something in her head, and she, having had a modicum of politeness drilled into her by Fleur, answered their greeting with all the good feeling she could muster. It wasn’t as if she was making much progress on the material anyway, so Hermione allowed them to lead her into a conversation about the bustling activity on the school grounds as though she hadn’t had anything else on her mind. Besides, Hermione <em>was </em>curious about it, and they seemed to have a better idea than she did.<br/><br/>“I didn’t expect them to be at work already,” Hermione admitted. “The First Task won’t be for a couple of months.”<br/><br/>“There are preparations that have to be made. They vill vant to spend as little time as possible setting up each Task,” Viktor said.<br/><br/>That made sense. Hermione observed as one of them, shouting for somebody named “Pettigrew,” walked into the Forbidden Forest. “Do you think they’re allowed in there?”<br/><br/>“If they are not, then probably ve vill hear about it,” Dmitry said agnostically.<br/><br/>“It is ve who vere forbidden, not the professors,” Viktor said, with a pointed look to Dmitry. “Probably it is the case that Ministry wizards are also allowed, if they are here at Hogwarts at all.” He looked at Hermione’s conjured desk, and the books spread across it. “You are studying again,” Viktor observed, smiling. “At least you are able to enjoy the veather. I think it is very varm for autumn, but that is to be expected, no? Ve are so very far south.”<br/><br/>“This is the furthest north I’ve ever been,” Hermione said. “Durmstrang must be <em>very </em>far.”<br/><br/>“That is vhat ve all say, that it is far, but in truth ve do not really know. Vhen ve travel on Lögseims, ve must go belowdecks vhile it enters deep vaters and swims back and forth, so that ve do not know the vay, and vhen it is dark the stars are obscured so that ve cannot chart them. Perhaps Durmstrang lies on the Equator and is kept cold by magic, or actually it is in Antarctica.”<br/><br/>“Your professors must work very hard to maintain that. Beauxbatons is Unplottable, but lots of people still know how to get there.”<br/><br/>“Durmstrang is institute for magical research first, and school for magical studying second. The staff are all concerned about theft of secrets, so they make it hard to find.” A thoughtful look crossed his face. “Perhaps you vould enjoy it at Durmstrang, since you enjoy studying very much.”<br/><br/>Hermione tried not to frown at the idea. Didn’t they teach the Dark Arts at Durmstrang as well? She opted for a slight change in topic. “I am studying,” she acknowledged. “There’s an awful lot to work on, but… Keeping busy is good, I think.”<br/><br/>Viktor glanced down at her books again. “You did not mention you vere taking mental magic as vell, I think. Have you added another elective?”<br/><br/>“It’s...personal enrichment,” Hermione said. “I’m finding it very difficult to figure out, though.”<br/><br/>“I imagine so,” Viktor replied. He sounded very certain, in a way that roused Hermione’s curiosity.<br/><br/>“Are either of you studying Occlumency?” she asked.<br/><br/>“Not here,” said Dmitry.<br/><br/>Viktor shook his head. “There is not much that I vant to keep a secret, and I am thinking our headmaster vould not like it very much anyway if I studied mental magic here, even if there is no opportunity to do so at Durmstrang. He vould not… He vould not…” Viktor turned and muttered something to Dmitry.<br/><br/>“Appreciate,” said Dmitry<br/><br/>“Headmaster Karkaroff vould not appreciate if I opened myself up to Riddle’s teaching.”<br/><br/>“I can imagine not,” Hermione said. “I’m...not eager to do it myself. He’s...<em>enough</em> without rooting around in my head.” It didn’t help that Octobre seemed interested in him, either.<br/><br/>“It is not that.” Viktor chewed thoughtfully on what was left of his waffle. “Our headmaster does not like him very much, of course. There have been too many changes to how things are done—<em>I</em> do not mind so much, you should know, but the headmaster does, and so he vould never appreciate that kind of disclosure”<br/><br/>“Then why did he agree to the Tournament?”<br/><br/>“He has great pride in Durmstrang and would come here in any case to get glory for our school, I think, but also I am thinking he wants to show that Durmstrang methods are superior to Hogwarts methods,” Viktor explained. “There are no muggle-borns allowed at Durmstrang, and the headmaster is worrying about what will the consequences be, now that Britain has reopened to the world.”<br/><br/>Hermione digested that. “He wants to prove pure-blood supremacy.”<br/><br/>“<em>He</em> does,” Viktor emphasized. “I am here to prove <em>myself</em>,” he said, and Hermione couldn’t help but smile at that.<br/><br/>“And what about you?” she asked Dmitry.<br/><br/>He took another drink from his flask, then offered Hermione a drunken grin. “I am here for the having of fun and to watch Viktor do exciting things.”<br/><br/>“You think Viktor will be Durmstrang’s champion?”<br/><br/>Dmitry shrugged. “I think Viktor will do exciting things,” he said, gently elbowing Viktor in the side. “He always is doing exciting things, is he not?”<br/><br/>Viktor sighed and turned to Dmitry. “If I am Durmstrang’s champion, I hope that will be the most exciting thing I ever do,” he said, and Dmitry laughed.<br/><br/>Fleur had classes soon after, so Idalia had no one to spar with and, more importantly, Hermione had no one to keep her at least one-tenth aware of the unwritten world, so she took the opportunity to withdraw to the carriage. It was nearly midnight before Hermione put the books away, and she was little closer to her goal than when she had started. There was all this nonsense about clearing her mind, for one thing, and she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to empty it. Thinking about the history of the concept of nothing almost certainly wasn’t the same thing as just not thinking of anything, which also wasn’t to be confused with not thinking of anything <em>in particular</em>.<br/><br/>If only the book had asked her to focus on just one thing, rather than get rid of all the thoughts. Then Hermione could have gone to bed successful after all, thinking of nothing but frustration.<br/><br/>The next morning, Professor Trocar didn’t call on Hermione in History of Magic, and Hermione didn’t volunteer herself. It seemed less like peace than a temporary armistice, and Hermione felt as though Professor Trocar saw and took note every time Hermione twitched in response to a comment about muggles or a subtle disagreement with the histories she knew, but it might have just been her imagination. In Transfiguration, Professor Crouch set them on their first animate-to-animate transfiguration, from mouse to rat—or, in Latin, from <em>mus</em> to <em>mus</em>. Lunch came next, then Ghoul Studies, where Professor Lupin lectured on the taxonomy of <em>gula gula</em> and its close relatives, and thereafter was a two-hour block for Charms, taught by the soft-spoken Professor Warren, who instructed them in the Disillusionment Charm.<br/><br/>There was only a little time to study after Charms before Fleur reminded her of dinner, and then Hermione returned to her books, only to remember that she still had homework and correspondence classes to attend to. Much later, and realizing she was growing tired, Hermione noticed the time: nearly eleven in the evening. For a couple of minutes she considered her options, then forced herself to the carriage’s potions chest. There were risks to brewing Alacrity Elixir in a tired state, like setting fire to the carriage or making a mistake and giving herself insomnia for the next week, but the alternatives were worse. If Hermione took a nap, then she might oversleep and miss Astronomy.<br/><br/>Half an hour later, the potion was complete, albeit weak, and soon thereafter Hermione ascended with all the Fourth Years to the highest level of the castle’s highest tower. Her eyelids were heavy and her feet almost dragged, but all her exhaustion was brushed away when she beheld the stars, bright and clear beneath the cloudless autumn sky.<br/><br/>“This is the star Vega, the falling vulture. The Norse called it Sudrstjarna, the south star. The goblins call it Gekalat, the cart-driver,” Professor Sinistra said. “Once, thousands of years ago, it was the northern pole star. Someday, it will be again.”<br/><br/>Hermione slept like the dead till breakfast, and not the least bit fitfully. When she awoke, it was as though she had passed directly from night to morning, and if she’d had any dreams (or nightmares), she couldn’t recall them.<br/><br/>The next morning marked Hermione’s first full week at Hogwarts, and—because it had been canceled for the Opening Duel—her first arithmancy class. There was a small overlap between divination and arithmancy, but there was more to the latter than prognostication or even spell creation: the law of large numbers (and the law of very large numbers, which was not simply the same thing but bigger), the stability of sevens, and other matters. Among wizards, there was little sense that combinatorics and statistics were different fields, or that double-entry bookkeeping was less magical than ritual squares. Hermione had encountered all of it in her arithmantic textbooks.<br/><br/>Those thoughts led inevitably to ruminations on Occlumency, which lay in such contrast to arithmancy. It wasn’t that arithmancy was easy. Hermione’s proficiency in that subject came more from steady dedication than natural talent, but she could work through it from basic principles, like history or potions. In contrast, even <em>Protection Charm Your Mind</em>, the most elementary of the Occlumency texts which Hermione had checked out, implied that solo study didn’t really happen. The authors of these texts seemed to take as granted that the student had someone proficient who could guide them, and seemed to include more in the way of mental exercises than any kind of spell that one could just <em>practice</em>. The books were full of references to inner sensations and subjective abstractions that were difficult for Hermione to conceptualize. What did it mean to “reassemble the psychic apparatus,” and how was she supposed to know whether her memories were “membranous” or “filamentous” or neither? It wasn’t even clear whether the problem was that these concepts really were so intractable without someone there to enter her mind and say, “There, what you are feeling <em>now</em> are the fingers of the will,” or if the authors, being practiced in mental magic by definition, were just unused to explaining their thoughts on paper.<br/><br/>As Hermione’s brain wracked itself for solutions, her feet carried her through school grounds near the Black Lake. There was a silver path here where, last weekend, there had been only grass, and in the distance she could see an elderly witch conferring with Headmaster Riddle. Hermione ground to a halt then, as she saw the witch smile and shake—was she laughing? had Riddle told a joke?—and then, from out of the groundskeeper’s house, she...saw Riddle again.<br/><br/>As unexpected as it was to see Headmaster Riddle here, it was more shocking still to see two of him. It took a moment for Hermione to remember what Longbottom and Malfoy had said about Riddle’s uniform during the Opening Feast and realize that at least one of them, and maybe both, were Death Eaters.<br/><br/>It was a good imitation. The all-encompassing darkness of their robes, swallowing up texture and definition as though someone had cut out a cloak of night and not a length of fabric, made it impossible to pick out any minor differences in their appearance. More than that, the two Death Eaters carried themselves in a similar manner, walked the same and had the same posture. Polyjuice was a possible explanation, but they must have spent a great deal of time practicing their movements too.<br/><br/>The witch departed from them and, as Hermione watched, the Death Eaters clasped each other’s forearms and leaned forward, pressing the foreheads of their masks together. A few seconds passed without any word exchanged between them, at least so far as Hermione could overhear, and then they released each other and moved away.<br/><br/>“Have you ever seen anything like it?” someone said, and Hermione startled, nearly jumping out of her skin. She turned to Dmitry, who smiled sheepishly. “I am vondering how many there are of those fellows.”<br/><br/><em>Too many</em>, Hermione thought, but that was probably the wrong thing to say. “I don’t know. Where’s Viktor?”<br/><br/>Dmitry started to shrug, then paused and pointed back down in the direction they’d come from. “Ve are not <em>alvays</em> together,” he said.<br/><br/>That was fair. Hermione wasn’t glued to Fleur either, and neither was Lino to Idalia.<br/><br/>There was silence for the space of a minute or two, but then as Dmitry turned to leave, Hermione thought back to her conversation from a couple days before. “You’re studying Occlumency, aren’t you?”<br/><br/>Something flickered across Dmitry’s face, a foreign expression that passed before Hermione recognized it, replaced by a shrug and a lazy smile. “Studying, studied, something like that. I...am knowing more than Viktor.” He shrugged again. “I vould not be good teacher though.”<br/><br/>“Anything would be better than my books,” Hermione almost said, but her tongue caught on the blasphemous utterance before it could pass by her lips, and that was enough of a pause for her to think better of pushing the matter. Instead, she smiled, thanked him, and returned to the carriage. There was somebody else that Hermione could ask, and she wouldn’t have to wait long for the opportunity.<br/><br/>In Potions that afternoon, the Contusion Cream which Professor Malfoy assigned them required extremely fresh rat spleens, which meant they had to butcher—gut—<em>process</em> the rats in class. The work gave rise to unpleasant thoughts, but it wasn’t too hard to hand off the bulk of it to Longbottom in exchange for taking care of the precise measurements. Meanwhile, Nott kept his eye on the potion itself and added ingredients as they were handed to him, and together they made quite an effective trio.<br/><br/>“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad you’re going to be here just for one year,” said Longbottom. “Professor Malfoy might put us all in Group F if he thought he could depend on you.”<br/><br/>“Would that really be so bad?”<br/><br/>“You have to pace yourself,” said Nott. “Nobody is going to look at my transcripts and see what group Professor Malfoy sorted me into for Potions, but they’ll notice whether I have an ‘E’ or just an ‘A.’ If there’s something that I really want to sink my teeth into, then I can study it privately.”<br/><br/>“Don’t you feel like you’re setting your sights low?”<br/><br/>Nott smiled. “If I could have gotten myself into Group A, then I would’ve, but it’s hard to do badly and pretend to not know anything when you’re trying to learn, and anyway, Professor Malfoy knows my father.” As if on cue, the professor made himself heard in that moment, talking to a Group R student who had been about to add an ingredient out of order. He was speaking too quietly for Hermione to pick up everything, but it sounded to be equal parts lecture and admonishment.<br/><br/>“I’ve been studying Occlumency,” Hermione eventually managed to say. “As a side project. But it isn’t going very well.”<br/><br/>Nott looked curiously at her. “Do you have any prior experience with mental magic?”<br/><br/>Hermione shook her head. “They don’t teach it at Beauxbatons. It isn’t… Well, it isn’t commonly taught anywhere, is it? Besides Hogwarts, I mean. It’s difficult, and I don’t think you could get a full curriculum out of it in the first place except that you’ve expanded the subject to include everything from Legilimency to Pensieves. And it’s...sensitive,” Hermione added. Another good adjective would have been “intimate.” It required trust to open your mind to someone else who was so much more skilled than you—Hermione had known that even before she came to Hogwarts—and it was no small wonder that Riddle was permitted to peruse minds as he liked.<br/><br/>“You could enroll in the class now that you’re here,” Nott said. “You’d be a year behind, but the way that everything is so topic-focused, there wouldn’t be that much to catch up on before you understood what the headmaster was talking about.”<br/><br/>Hermione carefully examined the diced porcupine quills on her cutting board, less because she was concerned she had miscut them and more for an excuse to look away from Nott. “I don’t...really want to…” She swallowed. “Besides, my course load is heavy enough as it is.” Hermione looked back and plastered on what she hoped was a convincing smile.<br/><br/>Nott’s eyes lit up with amusement. “You don’t say. It isn’t something that’s well-suited to private study, though. I have the benefit of being able to practice with my father.” He checked their cauldron, then added a pinch of powdered moonstone. “We aren’t really going to be getting into Occlumency until next year anyway, I suppose.”<br/><br/>“You mentioned that last week. But I was wondering what you knew already. And if you’d be, euh, interested in a study group. You said you were preparing for it already, weren’t you?”<br/><br/>Nott nodded. “I have a busy schedule, but we could probably work something out. Monday mornings before ten-thirty?”<br/><br/>“Werewolf Studies.”<br/><br/>“Ah. How have you found it?”<br/><br/>“There’s rather a lot,” she admitted. “It makes me think about, well… There aren’t any classes like that in the rest of Europe.”<br/><br/>“Are there any other schools which admit werewolves?”<br/><br/>“I don’t think so, but that’s the bigger problem, isn’t it?”<br/><br/>“I suppose that’s why you’re here, to see how we do things,” Nott said.<br/><br/>Was there anybody who didn’t have a political motive behind the Triwizard Tournament? Hermione would have liked to say that Madame Maxime had come purely in the spirit of interscholastic cooperation, but it wasn’t altogether clear that the headmistress even wanted to be here, not after Hermione’s meeting with Octobre. Had she been naive to not expect that?<br/><br/>Hermione and Nott’s schedules were all but totally incompatible in the morning and afternoon, and neither of them wanted to meet for only thirty or forty minutes at a time, but their evenings were free (or at least flexible, for who was ever free when there was homework?), so they settled on Tuesday evenings. The question of politics, however, remained stuck in her mind until she went to dinner, where it was jostled out by the sight of the Great Hall. The High Table had been extended on either end. Sitting on the far left was a sort of portly, rosy-skinned man, speaking happily with Professor Sprout. On the other end sat a worn-looking, gray-haired woman and, last of all, Laurent Octobre.<br/><br/>While Samara recognized the woman as some government official from Russia (or rather, recognized her from some conference called Zaubererwelt Autorentreffen, and then remembered she had described herself as a government worker), the mystery of their presence was left unexplained all through dinner. Once the last traces of dessert were gone, Hermione supposed that now, finally, they were going to get some definitive answers, but it was not to be.<br/><br/>The headmaster rose from his seat, and the Great Hall fell silent while every light in the Great Hall went dark—save the Goblet, which burned blue-white with ghostly flames. As Riddle set it on the High Table, light danced with shadows across his bone-white mask, and the rest of his cloak was visible just as a vague outline, demarcating the lines of a space that was darker than darkness. “Now we will see which students the Goblet of Fire has deemed worthy. When you are chosen, I ask that you make your way speedily to the antechamber for your instructions.”<br/><br/>Hermione thought he might clarify where the antechamber was, or how anybody would get there when it was impossible to see a thing. A few murmurs across the room suggested she wasn’t the only one, but then the fire rose and reddened, and something flew out of it, too fast and too small to be seen. Riddle snatched it from the air like a snake seizing a bird in mid-flight, and then his fingers shifted in the half-lit dark. The sound of parchment crept through the silence, and the headmaster spoke again, saying “The champion for Beauxbatons is...Fleur Delacour.”<br/><br/>No, <em>no</em>. Hermione whipped her head around so fast that it hurt. She turned just in time to be near-blinded when, out of the darkness, Fleur <em>shone</em>, luminous and magnificent. Like the water of a river, light flowed down and collected around her feet, and ran down the floor in a white-gold path that led to the back of the Great Hall. There, at the very end, a door revealed itself and opened up.<br/><br/>There was clapping all around, not least from the other Beauxbatons students, but Hermione was hardly aware of it. “F-Fleur,” she said. <em>Please don’t</em>, whispered a part of Hermione’s mind, but the rest of her gathered and steeled itself. “I believe in you.”<br/><br/>Fleur smiled and patted Hermione’s shoulder. Her hand was warm, or maybe Hermione herself was so cold. “Thank you,” she said, and she smiled and stood to strengthening applause. As she followed the path it faded to darkness behind her, till at last there was just the fire and Fleur, fierce and bright without a path beneath her feet, while the door closed behind her. And then there was only fire and darkness, and Hermione felt the emptiness beside her as though it were a crushing vice.<br/><br/>Again the fire changed colors, making a bright and bloody reflection on Riddle’s mask. Hermione’s attention was all elsewhere, and she only dimly noticed as Riddle called out the name of Durmstrang’s champion, “...Viktor Krum.” Viktor stood and bowed, as bright as Fleur had been, and followed his own streaming path of light to the antechamber. The door was open but the room was dark, and in short order it swallowed him up as it had Fleur.<br/><br/>The flames turned blood-red for a third time and rose toward the ceiling, like reaching fingers or a pillar of fire.<br/><br/>“Anyone but Haywood,” Hermione whispered. She could see it in her mind already: fire, blood, screaming, even death. “Anyone but Haywood…”<br/><br/>Riddle unfolded the slip with care. “The Hogwarts champion is—” He paused. “...Hermione Granger.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Law of the Medes and Persians</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Then the men went as a group to King Darius and said to him, “Remember, Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree or edict that the king issues can be changed.”</p>
  <p>Daniel 6:15 (New International Version)</p>
</blockquote><p>The response was immediate and terrible. The Great Hall erupted. If there had been a wall set up around Hermione, then the Hogwarts student body could have brought it down with their shouts alone. In that first moment, as the Great Hall was lit only by the flickering of the Goblet and Hermione’s own glow, which even now was spilling out and shining forth to the antechamber, she could see Haywood staring at her, eyes wide and full of loathing.<br/><br/>Had the light been any better, Hermione probably still would not have seen anything but that hatred. The anger of the other students roared all around her, like a storm appearing from out of clear skies, though most of that was for the sake of national and scholastic pride. Only a few of the students, Haywood among them, might have believed that the Goblet of Fire would have chosen them, if it had not chosen <em>her</em>, and their hate was personal.<br/><br/>Her thoughts ran so fast and so confusedly that Hermione wasn’t sure whether her protestations were made aloud or just in her head, and the noise was so great that she could hardly hear her thoughts, let alone her voice. Amidst the din, she could make out cries of shock, howls of unfairness, and accusations of cheating, and amidst the angry faces, she saw Longbottom and Malfoy looking bewildered and stunned, respectively. There seemed no end to it, but then the table shook, and the dishes clattered, and the Great Hall’s starry roof returned, its lights erupting in fiery supernovae, the brightness of which forced Hermione first to avert her eyes, and then to close them.<br/><br/>“Be silent,” Riddle said into the shocked pause, and there was silence. “Miss Granger, I would appreciate it if you could proceed to the antechamber. Misters Bagman and Octobre, Friend Mertvago, I beg your pardon and ask that you remain seated for the time being. Now, please, Miss Granger.”<br/><br/>The light dimmed, and her eyes adjusted to what remained. Without a word, Hermione removed herself from the table, and made her way to the antechamber and away from everything, and everyone, in it. As she left, she could hear hushed murmurs emerge, but these were cut off as soon as she closed the antechamber door behind her, as quickly as if that had killed them.<br/><br/>The room was empty save for Fleur and Viktor, sitting patiently on opposite ends of a couch. “Where is the champion for Hogwarts? Has the ceremony been interrupted?” Viktor asked, and Hermione stood there, awkward and silent, searching for the words to explain, while she watched the confusion on Fleur’s face drain away to be replaced with horrified understanding. “<em>You</em> have been chosen as Hogwarts’ champion,” Fleur said, and before Hermione knew it, she had crossed the distance between them. She leaned over, their eyes level. “We will do something about this,” Fleur said, and she straightened up and repeated it to Madame Maxime and Riddle and Karkaroff as they entered the antechamber together.<br/><br/>“I didn’t put my name in the Goblet of Fire, and I’m not—”<br/><br/>Riddle held up a hand. “Silence.”<br/><br/>“<em>I’m not a Hogwarts student</em>,” Hermione said.<br/><br/>“Please, hold yourself,” Maxime said quietly, and then, turning to Riddle, she continued, “But I find that I too am confused. How did this happen?”<br/><br/>“There are many possibilities, but this is a conversation that should be postponed for now. We can investigate it later, but there is a more important matter at hand,” Riddle said.<br/><br/>“What, exactly?” she asked.<br/><br/>“Miss Granger, do you <em>want</em> to be part of the Tournament?”<br/><br/>“No! I told—”<br/><br/>“Then I propose that we immediately annul her selection,” he said, no longer paying any attention to Hermione.<br/><br/>Maxime’s eyes widened in pleasant surprise, and she nodded. “I agree.” An empty moment passed, and she turned to Karkaroff. “We need unanimous agreement,” she said softly, as if Karkaroff were a small child, and not merely (to her) a small man.<br/><br/>“I’m not sure why I would do that.”<br/><br/>“Do you think that she is a valid champion?” Riddle questioned.<br/><br/>Karkaroff laughed. “Of course not!”<br/><br/>“Then what are you waiting for?” asked Maxime.<br/><br/>Karkaroff smiled. The expression was subdued, but something like triumph seemed to alight in his eyes. “With all due respect, I have not forgotten the show that Headmaster Riddle’s students put on last week. If I could have done the same, I would have considered the merits of demoralizing and perhaps even horrifying the other champions, but…” His grin broadened. “The way I see it, Viktor now only has to worry only about the champion from Beauxbatons, because Hogwarts is represented by a fourteen-year-old.” He laughed. “Not only a fourteen-year-old, but a mu—” Maxime stood straight, all three-point-five meters of her, and something about Riddle’s posture seemed more threatening than a moment before. Karkaroff swallowed and smiled again, but he wore it with obvious discomfort now. “As I said, I see no reason to annul the drawing.”<br/><br/>“I can make things unpleasant for you,” murmured Riddle.<br/><br/>The mere idea seemed to disconcert Karkaroff, but he got a lock on his features before he replied. “The Goblet of Fire won’t recognize a nullification that is made under duress. Now that you have threatened me, I’m not sure I could possibly comply with your demands, even if you withdraw it. In the end, the possibility will still remain in my head.”<br/><br/>“This is no longer about annulling her selection. You’ve made your stance on this very clear, and it is a policy of mine to not beat dead hippogriffs. But there must be discipline, lest misbehavior continue.”<br/><br/>Karkaroff took a half-step backwards, then narrowed his eyes. “People are watching this Tournament. The world’s eye is on it. You’ll never rehabilitate yourself for the I.C.W. if you harm me.”<br/><br/>“My patience is undying. Even when it burns, it lives.”<br/><br/>“Yes. Well,” Karkaroff said, and Hermione couldn’t tell whether it was his disquiet or his impatience that was showing. “I have to go.”<br/><br/>“We have yet to speak with the champions,” Riddle said.<br/><br/>“An unnecessary procedure. We can speak to each of them in private. Viktor, <em>come</em>,” Karkaroff demanded, and then he slunk away out of the antechamber.<br/><br/>Though Karkaroff hadn’t looked back to confirm that his order was being followed, Viktor stood, apologized with an awkward smile, and departed anyway. The room seemed somehow smaller without him, and the situation was not improved when Octobre entered, walking close behind Bagman and Mertvago. Hermione sat on the couch beside Fleur, and adjusted herself so that Octobre was visible only in the corner of her eye.<br/><br/>“Why did the Durmstranniks leave?” inquired Mertvago.<br/><br/>“Headmaster Karkaroff had business to attend to. I wouldn’t dare tell his story for him,” Riddle replied. Something flickered and sparked over Mertvago’s shoulder like a hinkypunk’s light. “Friend Mertvago, your Eye of Providence,” he said softly.<br/><br/>The light went out, and Mertvago flushed. “I apologize.”<br/><br/>“It is already forgotten.”<br/><br/>“So, what’s this about Beauxbatons having two goes at the quaffle, Riddle?” Bagman said. “I thought Hogwarts was supposed to get a reach in for it, or are we just hosting the affair?”<br/><br/>“The Goblet of Fire selected Ms. Granger, and Karkaroff refused to annul the selection with us, so it seems that we are rather stuck with her.”<br/><br/>“Did he now?” Bagman shrugged. “I wouldn’t have seen how it concerned him any. There’s plenty of time to turn him around. Merttie, pal, maybe you could—”<br/><br/>“We are not on good terms,” Mertvago replied brusquely.<br/><br/>Bagman blinked. “Well, alright, but really, now, how is she even eligible? She isn’t a Hogwarts student, so how’d the Cup—sorry, the Goblet, pick her?”<br/><br/>“It is under the impression that she is a Hogwarts student,” Riddle explained.<br/><br/>Bagman looked over at Hermione. “Why’d you put your name in for Hogwarts, girl? Did you forget what school you came from?”<br/><br/>“I—”<br/><br/>“It hardly matters. There will be an investigation into the matter, but for now, the champions must be appraised of their duties,” Riddle interrupted.<br/><br/>“Quite right, fair enough.”<br/><br/>“But you can’t be serious about having Hermione compete,” Fleur said. “She does not want to!” Fleur looked to Madame Maxime for support, but it was Riddle who spoke next:<br/><br/>“One of you has left already, so I will be brief. You know already that there will be three Tasks. Your performance on the first two will be rated by a panel of nine judges: Headmaster Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, and myself will form the first triumvirate, and each of us has selected two other judges. We thought it good for the British, French, and Russian governments to have a permanent position—hence the presence of Misters Bagman and Octobre, and Friend Mertvago—and they will form the second triumvirate. The composition of the third will vary from Task to Task, but there will be international observers at each one, and we have selected some of them as judges.”<br/><br/>“There’s a lot riding on this,” Bagman interjected. “Fame and fortune for the winner, and national pride. Whole world is watching. Well, we’ll put a show on for them even with this Beauxbatons business,” he added, almost muttering the last of it.<br/><br/>Riddle continued without any commentary on Bagman. “The Third Task will be winner-takes-all, but you should not take that as an excuse to slacken your efforts. Each Task will lead into the next, such that poor performance on one will impair you on the next. There will be certain difficulties associated with each of the Tasks, which you will learn only prior to embarking on them, but in all cases, you are absolutely forbidden from asking for, or accepting, assistance from any of the staff of any school, or representatives from any government, and if it is determined that you have broken this rule, then you will be barred from participating in the next Task, which will not only trigger the forfeiture clause of the Tournament’s contract but also put your replacement at a severe disadvantage.” When Riddle stopped speaking, it took a moment for anyone to realize that he was actually done.<br/><br/>“If that's all, I wager I’ve got a long weekend ahead of me, so I’ll be going,” Bagman said, and he made himself scarce, saying something as he went about Karkaroff and a bottle of Ogden’s. Mertvago followed after him, and Octobre remained behind just long enough to wish “good luck and fair fortune, for both of you,” before he left as well.<br/><br/>When Hermione began to stand up, Riddle raised a hand. “Miss Granger, I would like to have a word. You may stay as well, Madame Maxime. We won’t be long,” he added, when Hermione and Fleur glanced up at the headmistress. Madame Maxime nodded, and Fleur looked back once at Hermione, then left. “What I have to say is this: We are in an extraordinarily unusual situation, but you should not think that I will extend to you the least bit of leniency or support. You are not a student of Hogwarts, and you are not our champion. You may think I would like to avoid the sting of your failure, but I trust that history will remember that you were taught at Beauxbatons.”<br/><br/><em>What if I win?</em> thought Hermione, but it was too ridiculous a thought for her to be in danger of saying it aloud. “I understand, sir.”<br/><br/>After Riddle left, Madame Maxime leaned down to close some of the distance between herself and Hermione. “It wouldn’t be good for both of us to stay here while the others are leaving. Please meet with me when I have returned to the carriage.”<br/><br/>Hermione nodded, then followed her out into the Great Hall, where the reception was little better than the students’ initial response to the Goblet’s choice. The Beauxbatons delegation rose as one body as Hermione approached, and Fleur stuck close to her as they departed amid the boos and hisses from the Hogwarts students.<br/><br/>“Are you alright?” Fleur asked, so softly that Hermione could scarcely hear her.<br/><br/>“I’m fine, Fleur,” she said, and she mostly believed it. “I’m going to talk with Madame Maxime. We’ll get it figured out,” Hermione added, but Fleur sat with her anyway in the carriage’s salon, the two of them saying nothing much at all, until Madame Maxime passed through on the way to her study.<br/><br/>“Do you want me to wait outside for you?” Fleur asked as Hermione rose to follow the headmistress.<br/><br/>“No. I’ll get this worked out. <em>You</em> should get started on celebrating. You’re still our champion, no matter what.” Hermione gave Fleur the best smile she could muster, then went on her way.<br/><br/>The carriage was bigger on the inside, but in the headmistress’ study, things were just <em>bigger</em>. Madame Maxime was a tall woman, and she was most comfortable with books that weren’t smaller than her hand, with a chair tall enough to leave room for her legs, with a desk that didn’t require her to hunch over. Hermione had never visited the study before, but she had once been called to the headmistress’ office, and now, as then, she felt just a little bit like Alice in Wonderland.<br/><br/>Best to get straight to the point, and not waste Madame Maxime’s time, Hermione decided. “I want to withdraw from the Tournament,” she said.<br/><br/>“You cannot,” Maxime said. “As Headmaster Riddle told you, there is a contract in effect.”<br/><br/>That wasn’t how Hermione had expected the conversation to go. “But I didn’t—I didn’t sign my name. How can I be the champion? I’m not even...” <em>Not even a Hogwarts student</em>, Hermione wanted to say, but how much of that was true? How much did it matter? “How can I be bound to a contract that I didn’t sign? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”<br/><br/>Maxime shook her head. “The contract only relates to you indirectly. It was not you, but I—and Headmasters Riddle and Karkaroff—who signed the contract, and who are bound by it.”<br/><br/>“What was the contract?”<br/><br/>Maxime pursed her lips. “There are many terms, most of them dating to a time when the relationship between our schools was more strained. What is relevant to us now is that, if any student who is selected as their school’s champion subsequently chooses to withdraw from the Tournament, or is thrown out of the Tournament for ill behavior, then the relevant administrator—myself, in this case—must expel that student. To enforce this, we have, each of us, voluntarily bound ourselves and wedded this contract to the enchantments of our respective schools. If I refuse to do this, if I violate the contract, then Beauxbatons will no longer recognize me as its headmistress. It may not even be possible for me to enter as a visitor. There once was a headmistress of Durmstrang who lost her position in this way and died when she returned to attend the graduation of her great-grandson. Beauxbatons is not Durmstrang, but the enchantments of each of our schools are complex and sometimes work in unforeseen ways, so I cannot count out the possibility that I, too, might be in danger.”<br/><br/>“You could never come back? Who would take over?” Hermione added in a mutter, mostly to herself. Maxime was not young, but neither was she old, and if there was any kind of succession plan (as there surely had to be, just in case of an accident) then none of the students knew of it.<br/><br/>“In the event of such an absence, it is permitted for the King to select my successor. But that is not important,” Maxime continued. “You can go to nearly any school in the world, if you wish it. I will write a letter of recommendation to make sure it happens, as will every member of the faculty, and there will be no favor owed that I will not ask for, and no debt I will not incur, to make sure that you receive the education that you deserve. There are three schools of magic that teach in French, and more that teach in English. There is a school in Australia, and a dozen in the Americas, and—”<br/><br/>“I don’t understand.”<br/><br/>“Hermione,” Maxime said, her voice both fierce and kind. “Beauxbatons is not your home. You have parents and a sister who love you, and your friends will remain your friends no matter how far away they may be, and you are nearly half-done with your education. There is no reason that you <em>must</em> stay here. If you would be in danger out there, if you had to be protected, then I might advise you to stay, but the danger is <em>here</em>.”<br/><br/>Maxime wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t clear how far Octobre’s reach extended, or what he might do to keep Hermione here, or even to retaliate. Or was that the point? Did Octobre want to remove Maxime, for some reason Hermione couldn’t puzzle out?<br/><br/>Hermione looked down, and told herself it was just that her neck hurt from craning up. “The First Task isn’t until November. Can I have time to think about this?” she asked.<br/><br/>“Take all the time you need.”<br/><br/>Hermione spoke with Fleur briefly, just long enough to let Fleur know there was a solution and she ought to stop worrying, but without any elaboration on the details of that solution, then went to her bedroom. She cast a Silencing Charm on her pillow, cast another on her door (and locked it) to be safe, then let herself crumple onto her bed and cry into the pillow. What had she done, that now she had to lose everything that was important to her?<br/><br/>Thinking through it logically, Hermione knew that she shouldn’t be complaining. She had more options than many others might have in her situation. Some of the American schools were known to her for their bigotry, and another of them for having several professors who didn’t even believe that what they did was magic, but she was fluent in French and the curriculum at Lunétoiles was alright, even if it couldn’t hold a candle to Beauxbatons.<br/><br/>But it was hard to imagine even going to another school, away from Fleur and the rest of her friends. Forget about remembering how to make friends who hadn’t first been Fleur’s friends, Hermione wasn’t sure she’d ever learned how to do that in the first place. Besides, friends weren’t a fungible resource. Hermione could make a hundred friends and none of them would mean as much to her as Fleur did.<br/><br/>Thinking of Fleur made the question harder in other ways, too. Hermione knew, of course, that Fleur would advise her to do what she had to do, and stay safe, but when she asked Fleur to do the same, she had been rebuffed. Leaving wouldn’t just be leaving, it would be running away, and for as long as she lived, no matter how long she lived, she’d be standing small in Fleur’s esteem, a little girl who would never be her equal.<br/><br/>The little glass beetle which Madame Maxime gave her last week couldn’t possibly impart any advice, but she unpinned it from her lapel and examined it anyway, looking into its brilliant blue glass as if she could scry the answer if only she tried hard enough. It was supposed to keep her safe, but didn’t she have a responsibility to everyone else, too? France had protected her, Beauxbatons had taught her, and Fleur had saved her, and that had to have incurred some kind of debt. If Octobre wanted her here, as he surely did, then he might punish Beauxbatons if she left.<br/><br/>The beetle said nothing.<br/><br/>Sighing, Hermione pulled herself from the bed and set the beetle down her desk, then retrieved a mirror to check her face. Though she had never been one for makeup, necessity had forced her to pay attention to a few details about her appearance and, with water and a conjured handkerchief, she pressed her eyes until they no longer looked like she’d had a fit. Nobody was going to come in, and Hermione wasn’t about to go out, but even rusty habits died hard when they were old enough.<br/><br/>Sighing, Hermione pulled herself from the bed and set the beetle down on her desk, then tried to busy herself. Her first resort was homework, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it long enough to read two lines of Circe’s poetry, let alone interpret them from Greek. Personal projects were no better; reading about occlumency only reminded her of how little progress she had made on her own, and <em>Tom Riddle: British Cincinnatus</em> made her want to scream. She tried to organize her notes, but no more than five minutes had gone by before Hermione realized that she had, for the second time, transcribed notes for a correspondence class to her master scroll for a Hogwarts class.<br/><br/>It might help to move around, she decided, and there were a few books she could drop off at the Hogwarts Library (and maybe even enough time before it closed to find more to borrow). In principle, a book that could distract her had to exist, and with a couple of hours to look, she could probably find it. Hermione mentally flinched from the thought of leaving the room, but it just was a phantom reaction. A long time had gone by since she’d needed to think of her room as a refuge, and anyway, Hermione wasn’t about to let a bunch of ten-year-old girls beat her by controlling her actions all the way from the past. With one more glance at the mirror to make sure she looked presentable, Hermione exited her room. She could hear Fleur down the hall, and by the sound of it, half the carriage was probably with her in celebration, so Hermione stepped softly in the other direction. She put on a good face for Lino when they bumped into each other, and Hermione used the impending due date of her books as an excuse to remove herself promptly before Lino could say a word, and then she was home free.<br/><br/>Home. That was going to be a problem if Hermione had to...do the responsible thing and leave Beauxbatons, but it was a solvable one. Hermione couldn’t ask her parents to uproot their lives a second time, or to separate Miranda from the only home she’d ever known, but maybe she could let them stay in France and take an international flight to get to and from school. She wouldn’t even have to tell them, they knew so little about what was going on already. In all likelihood, nobody would even write them a letter about the situation so long as Hermione promised to explain things. Perhaps she could even arrange for a long-distance portkey and not have to worry about getting money for a round-trip ticket over each summer. It would at least be worthwhile to ask Madame Maxime.<br/><br/>But if she was going to be responsible, Hermione decided as she walked through the halls of Hogwarts, then she ought to tell the headmistress about Octobre, just in case that required Madame Maxime to change her plans. Or would telling her incite an even worse response from Octobre? He had, apparently, seen fit to dangle Hermione’s friends as a carrot, and it was possible he might dangle them as a stick, too, and make reprisals against them as well as her.<br/><br/>‘Perhaps’ and ‘maybe’ could be dirty words, sometimes. They could inspire doubt when conviction was necessary, and there was no end to the alternatives that a healthy, creative mind could spin up. But if she hadn’t been absorbed in her thoughts, perhaps she would have heard something in time, perhaps she would have guessed, perhaps she would have seen an opportunity before it was too late. Perhaps, perhaps… But that is not what happened. This is:<br/><br/>Mid-step, Hermione froze and, off-balance, toppled to the floor. She fell face-first, without the ability to shift herself or throw out her arms. Her head smacked the hard stone floor, and the books dug painfully into her chest. Had she broken her nose?<br/><br/>Behind her, she could hear footsteps. Hands gripped her, flipped her around to her back, and she saw Haywood’s face, expressionless but for a furious glint in her eyes.<br/><br/>Hermione tried to speak, but she still couldn’t move. She recalled how adept Haywood had been at silent casting during the Opening Duel, and then Haywood pointed with her wand and cast again. Hermione’s right arm crumpled like a couple of dry twigs beneath someone’s boot. If she could have screamed, if she could have cried out—but she still couldn’t move, a prisoner in her body. She almost blacked out from the pain, but that, too, seemed denied to her, so Hermione was left to hang in the agony while Haywood stared down at her.<br/><br/>Something shifted at the edge of her vision, and Hermione felt her leg snap back on itself at the knee. Haywood murmured an incantation, finally moving beyond what spells she could cast silently, and Hermione’s body, still immobilized, nevertheless tried to writhe in response. Then Haywood moved her wand in small circles over Hermione’s body, and slowly the pain subsided and her arm and leg felt normal again.<br/><br/>Haywood sat beside Hermione, leaning back on one arm and smiling as though they were two friends sitting on the grass and talking pleasantries. “When I took Dueling, Professor Flitwick dedicated the whole first term to the functional charms. Every firstie knows that the Severing Charm can slit a throat, I suppose, but you can burn someone with the Scouring Charm, or Engorge them till they pop. What I’ve thought a lot about is how even a healing spell can be used to hurt, but I haven’t had the opportunity to put it in practice until now. Thanks for that, I guess.”<br/><br/>The first joint of Hermione’s little finger bent backwards till it cracked, then her finger bent back again at the next, inexorably rolling itself up like a little scroll. As her fingers broke themselves, one by one, again and again, Haywood continued to speak. “I don’t know what you intended to gain from this, but it’s going to stop. I’m not about to let you humiliate our school.” The fingers on Hermione’s other hand began to snap. “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked for this.”<br/><br/>Hermione would have screamed, had her mouth obeyed her. She would have cried, but the tears only collected in pools on her eyes.<br/><br/>“I want you to withdraw, Granger. I don’t care what it’ll cost you, and neither should you. Think about what I’ve done in five minutes, and imagine what’ll happen if I pull you aside for an hour or two. There’s so much to be done just with the bones.” Haywood stood and loomed over her. “Don’t bother talking to anybody about this. No one will believe you anyway, and if you make me repeat this session, I might just forget to heal you.” Haywood’s wand made circles over Hermione again, and then the pain went away as Haywood did, agony to aches to painlessness as the sound of her footsteps receded into silence.<br/><br/>Hermione knew her paralysis was fading when she was able to cry. For a long time, she had the energy to do nothing else, and then, haltingly, she forced herself just a little off the floor, enough to put her back to the wall.<br/><br/>She was still sobbing when Fleur found her. In an instant, Hermione found herself wrapped up in Fleur’s embrace. She gasped, startled, then leaned into it, hiding her face.<br/><br/>“Tell me what happened.”<br/><br/>Hermione shook her head. She couldn’t. She <em>couldn’t</em>.<br/><br/>But Fleur’s patience was stronger than Hermione’s reluctance to speak. Eventually, once she was able to breathe properly, she wiped her eyes and looked up. “Fleur… How did you know?”<br/><br/>“You were gone a very long time, so I went looking for you. Madame Maxime had made a brief appearance in that time, so you could not be with her, and you were not in your room, so I asked around, and Lino said you had gone to return books to the Library.”<br/><br/>“Oh, I did. I dropped them,” Hermione realized aloud. Had they been damaged?<br/><br/>She shifted in place, moving to retrieve the books that lay scattered on the floor, but Fleur shook her head. “Forget them. They are not important right now. What happened to you?”<br/><br/>Haywood had threatened her with so much. Four years ago, that might have been enough to dissuade her from ever talking, along with Haywood’s smug certainty that it couldn’t possibly help. But now Hermione could, and did, look at Fleur, sitting beside her on the cold floor, and she knew that what Haywood had said was at least half a lie. Maybe Haywood would try to hurt her again, but Hermione would be believed, at least. Not by everyone, perhaps not even by many people, but there was only one person in this castle who really mattered.<br/><br/>“I...was attacked. Haywood tortured me,” she said.<br/><br/>Fleur’s rosewood wand was in her hand in that very moment, and she looked ready to launch away in pursuit, held back only by the fact that Hermione was here, and that going off would mean leaving Hermione behind. Instead, she looked Hermione up and down, as if looking for signs of injury. “Where are you hurt?”<br/><br/>“I’m not hurt. She…” Hermione swallowed thickly. “She healed me, too. I’m fine, physically speaking.” When she rose to retrieve her books, however, her left leg felt oddly stiff, and when she put her weight on it in the course of standing, she staggered. Fleur wrapped an arm around her waist and, without needing to be told, Hermione leaned against her.<br/><br/>“I’m going to take you to the Hospital Wing. It’s on the first floor.”<br/><br/>“The books—” Hermione began to say, but even as she spoke, Fleur levitated them into a conjured bag and slung them over her other shoulder.<br/><br/>Getting to the Hospital Wing proved a minor ordeal in its own right, in part because of Hermione’s limp, and in part because Fleur had misremembered the route. Madame Pomfrey wasn’t there when they arrived, but a gaunt vampire in a white and lime uniform and a scarlet Gryffindor tie was on-duty, sitting in a chair beside the headmaster’s dog and reading softly from a well-worn copy of <em>Mrs. Hatty’s Traditional Poems</em>. Fleur gave him a very sparse account of what had occurred, that Hermione had been hurt and was suffering lingering damage after a botched healing, and the Healer’s apprentice then set Hermione up in bed. On the opposite bed was the room’s only other occupant, a sheet-covered bundle whose only sign of life was a deep snore.<br/><br/>“Give me a moment to see what I’m working with here,” the vampire said quietly. Streams of soft, golden light flowed out from his wand, wrapping themselves around Hermione’s leg and hand. In patches and strips, the light darkened into a color like burnt umber, and he frowned and twisted a moonstone ring on his finger. “Are you currently feeling any pain?”<br/><br/>““Not really. It’s more uncomfortable than anything. It feels weak.”<br/><br/>“Madam Pomfrey will be here in a few minutes. I could try to heal your leg, but if your...friend already tried that, it’s going to be a bit more complicated. I think both of us would prefer that she handle it, if there’s no rush.”<br/><br/>When Pomfrey arrived, it turned out that complications didn’t entail a lengthier, or even painful, process, but it did mean that she wanted to keep Hermione in the Hospital Wing overnight to make sure that there were no aftereffects.<br/><br/>“Our headmistress needs to know what happened to her,” Fleur said.<br/><br/>“Then go and tell her,” said the Healer’s apprentice, more than a little snippily.<br/><br/>“I am not leaving her,” Fleur said. A brief smile passed across Pomfrey’s face, and she sent her apprentice to wake up Madame Maxime. It was only after he left that Hermione recognized him as Chrisley Rackharrow, the “very good” student Longbottom had mentioned prior to the Opening Duel. With that thought came the additional realization that she was probably lying across from Peregrine Derrick, who was still due to stay in the Hospital Wing for another week if Vicente’s estimate was right, but Hermione didn’t dwell on it for long.<br/><br/>The hour was late, and Hermione had been through at least two ordeals in one night. She only realized she was falling asleep in retrospect, when she awoke later. It was still well before morning, to find that Fleur was sitting in a chair beside the bed, head propped against the wall and fingers clutched around her wand.<br/><br/>Rackharrow was still there, too, sitting cross-legged on a free bed and reading <em>Mrs. Hatty </em>again, and he noticed Hermione immediately. “I’m sorry for being a little terse earlier,” he said. “I thought your friend was responsible, actually, since why else would she cover up damage like that and try to pass it off as an accident, but… Well, your headmistress came by, anyway, and straightened me out pretty quickly about it—scared Padfoot away and nearly woke up Derrick. We thought it would be best to let you sleep, though. She’ll be back in the morning.” Rackharrow smiled, keeping his mouth closed as he did so.<br/><br/>Hermione glanced at Fleur, somehow the picture of a sentry despite her unconscious condition, then rolled over on her right side and let herself drift off again.<br/><br/>Morning brought with it an unwelcome surprise when, at the same time that Madame Maxime arrived, so too did Riddle and Haywood, and following close behind was the headmaster’s great black dog.<br/><br/>“It has come to my attention that there may have been an altercation between two of our students—or two of mine, as the case may be.”<br/><br/>Madame Maxime looked as though she were about to object to that, but Fleur rose sharply from her chair and pointed aggressively at Haywood. “She cursed Hermione!”<br/><br/>Riddle’s mask turned to face Haywood. “Is this true?” he asked.<br/><br/>Hermione resisted the urge to groan, even internally. She knew what was going to come next, how Haywood would deny it all, and how Riddle would believe his favored student, but at least Hermione wouldn’t be alone.<br/><br/>“She—” started Haywood.<br/><br/>“Do not lie to me,” Riddle whispered. The words came out like a soft hiss.<br/><br/>“Granger can’t possibly be our champion,” Haywood said. “She isn’t one of us. She didn’t try, she doesn’t have the will, she doesn’t <em>deserve</em> it.”<br/><br/>Hermione heard an unexpected noise, something like a gas leak, then realized that Riddle had sighed. “You attacked a visitor from another school, and you did so—do not deny it—in order to intimidate her, for your own glory, so that you might rise in my esteem. You have no idea what this might have cost us.”<br/><br/>Haywood stared back, her eyes wide, gaze flickering between Riddle and Hermione in disbelief. Her mouth opened and closed several times, but there was only the sound of her breathing, quick and growing quicker. “You have detention with Mister Sable for the rest of the weekend, effective immediately,” Riddle said. “Someone will be along to retrieve you on Monday morning.”<br/><br/>Haywood dropped to her knees. Her eyes were wet now, fit to burst with tears, and she clutched the hem of his robes in one trembling hand as she looked up to his white mask. “Professor Riddle, I beg you, please—”<br/><br/>“I have spoken,” the headmaster said. “If I must speak again, then it will be to expel you from my sight forever.”<br/><br/>The rebuke could have been a physical blow, the way that Haywood shuddered against it, and she moved almost as if she had been thrown, legs and hands and arms and feet spilling over each other as she withdrew, trying to stand at the same time she was trying to leave the room.<br/><br/>On the opposite side of the room from Hermione, Derrick groaned and shifted in his bed. Riddle tapped Derrick’s head with the end of a white wand, and he settled back down.<br/><br/>Full of apprehension, but courageous and defiant as well, Hermione gathered her courage and asked, “Headmaster, who is Mister Sable?”<br/><br/>“He is our dementor for this year.”<br/><br/>“Your. Dementor,” Hermione said dumbly, the words struggling to get out, her throat sick and thick. “You sent her to a dementor.” The gears of her brain twisted, teeth locking together in the memory of the Opening Feast, when the whole student body seemed to shiver at the mention of Mister Sable, and his predecessor Mister Soot.<br/><br/>She almost didn’t catch what Riddle said next. “Of course, you don’t have anything to worry about, since you aren’t a Hogwarts student. The issue of interscholastic discipline was one of the very first things we settled when the talks began last year,” he said, as if that made anything better, that she, at least, wouldn’t be—<br/><br/>“You knew,” Fleur said, and Hermione turned to her, wondering how Fleur could think she had figured it out already, when she saw who Fleur was looking at, with an expression that was equal parts horror and anger.<br/><br/>“I knew,” Madame Maxime confirmed.<br/><br/>“How could you—”<br/><br/>“Just, please, Fleur, hold off for a minute,” Hermione said, and she refocused her attention on Riddle. “But dementors are dangerous. How could <em>you</em>?”<br/><br/>Riddle sighed again. “Dementors are intelligent beings,” he said slowly, as if he were explaining something simple to a child who was simpler yet. “Hungry, yes, but who is alive and does not hunger? They can restrain themselves, which is the important thing, the hallmark of a civilized creature, or at least of one that can be made civil.”<br/><br/>“But this is a <em>school</em>. This is a school. The First Years are just learning to use a wand. How many of the advanced students can cast a Patronus Charm? You can’t just—”<br/><br/>“I can, and I do.” Riddle sounded more amused than frustrated. “Now, I do recognize the value of a little prudence, and our friend is never put in a position where his restraint would be put to the test, but there is still so much good that a dementor can do, locked in a room with some reading material and other things to pass the time.”<br/><br/>“Reading material?”<br/><br/>“I can see now that your empathy does not extend to all beings, but surely you can at least see how someone might enjoy a good book. Britain’s Dementors are never alone until they come to Hogwarts. They are always together in Azkaban, never far from each other’s songs, and so Mister Sable not only risks boredom but suffers from loneliness. Books, trinkets, and a little company from time to time are the least that I can do for our cloaked dignitary. Perhaps you might alleviate his loneliness as well, sometime.”<br/><br/>“Riddle,” Maxime said in warning tones.<br/><br/>He laughed softly. “Your students are safe from detention, but permission slips are available upon request.”<br/><br/>Madame Maxime frowned, but said nothing more to Riddle. “There is already an emergency portkey to France. We can re-key it to take you to your parents’ house if you want, and I can escort you off the grounds, beyond the school’s Anti-Portkey Jinx, for you to use it. We will also send you your personal effects by express, and you will have them when you wake up in the morning.”<br/><br/>“Thank you, but…there’s something I have to settle first.” Hermione turned to Riddle. “What will happen when I withdraw?”<br/><br/>“Many things. You will have to be specific, or we will be here talking until they have all happened.<br/><br/>“What will happen to Hogwarts in the Tournament? You said that you could get another champion if my selection were annulled, but what would happen if I forfeited?”<br/><br/>“The Goblet of Fire would select another champion to represent our school.”<br/><br/>“Is it going to be Haywood?”<br/><br/>“Only the Goblet of Fire can say, and not until the flames rise.”<br/><br/>“What would happen to her entry? Would she still be eligible?”<br/><br/>“Yes.”<br/><br/>“Even though she—Despite what she did? What she’s done?”<br/><br/>“Are you trying to punish my student further, Miss Granger? I can assure you that she is <em>already </em>more sorry than you know,” Riddle said, so softly it was almost a murmur. “Besides, if the Goblet of Fire cares about student misbehavior outside the Tournament, I have not been told.”<br/><br/>Hermione thought as much, but with that confirmation, her dilemma wasn’t much of one at all. She looked at Fleur, at Riddle’s porcelain mask, then finally fixed her gaze on Madame Maxime. “I won’t be withdrawing.”<br/><br/>Madame Maxime sighed and shook her head, and Fleur swore. Riddle clapped his hands twice in perfunctory, and perhaps mocking, applause. “This has been exciting, but if your mind is made up then I have duties to attend to,” he said, and he departed from the room.<br/><br/>Fleur squeezed her hand. “You can’t, Hermione. The Tournament is dangerous, and—”<br/><br/>“If you weren’t my friend, I think you would still care about that,” Hermione said. “But because you’re my friend, you have to care about something else, too. If I got hurt, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself, I know that, but you told me that some things are more important than that, and this is one of them. I can’t do much for you, but I can do this one thing. I can protect you from Haywood.”<br/><br/>“You still have time. The First Task is not until November,” Madame Maxime said.<br/><br/>“If I change my mind, I’ll let you know. If you don’t mind, could I talk with Fleur in private?”<br/><br/>“Of course,” Madame Maxime said, and then there were two, not counting the dog.<br/><br/>There were things which Hermione couldn’t share, but there was so much which she <em>had </em>to. Perhaps those were even the same thing. At the very least, Hermione couldn’t hide everything. Slowly, she turned to Fleur, who looked at her with reassuring firmness. “We need to talk,” Hermione said. She wasn’t sure if she could tell Fleur <em>everything,</em> but she could at least make a start at it.<br/><br/>“Absolutely,” Fleur said. She gave Hermione’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and with that, Hermione felt like she could do anything. But before Hermione could say or do anything further, the door opened again. Viktor walked through, and Dmitry came after him, nearly spilling over his own feet like a human avalanche.<br/><br/>“Hello, I am Dmitry Poliakoff,” he said, extending his hand to Fleur, but he was too far away, and when he leaned further he unbalanced himself, tripped over Padfoot, and completely fell to the ground. “Av, mit ansigt,” he muttered. Viktor paid a passing glance to Dmitry, then stepped over his body and looked at Hermione. Nothing happened, except that he looked at her, and she looked back at him, and he continued to look at her—till Dmitry raised a hand from the floor and said, in muffled, aggravated tones, “Viktor, bare spør henne, du store tosk!”<br/><br/>“Da, da.” Viktor closed his eyes and took a breath. “Hermione, we need to talk.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>What is a “magically binding contract,” what are the consequences of breaking it, and how can somebody be bound to one without their permission or even their knowledge? There was a time once when you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting half a dozen Indy!Harry fics where Harry entered Voldemort’s name into the Goblet of Fire and Voldemort—not even knowing he had to attend—subsequently died or lost his magic or something like that. </p><p>This is my attempt at a resolution: The contract was made willingly, by the headmasters of the schools in question. The cost for breaking it is nothing like death or loss of magic, just the loss of their position, and we know from OOTP that it’s possible for Hogwarts, at least, to simply not recognize somebody as headmaster or headmistress. </p><p>In (this interpretation of) GOF, Dumbledore’s problem isn’t so much that Harry has literally no other option but to participate, but that every option has a cost and it isn’t clear which choice is going to play into Voldemort’s hands. If Harry is expelled, then he’s outside the protections of Hogwarts forever. But what if Voldemort’s real plan is to remove Dumbledore from Hogwarts? The Triwizard Tournament is dangerous, but at least it would be be happening on Dumbledore’s home turf, where he would be in the best possible position in case anything went wrong.</p>
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